#people saying this is worse than the holocaust which i guess you can put a number on

[sereniv]

i am so fucking sick of the antisimetism coming out of this

god i have so much to say i just cant

zionists dont touch

[redladypaige]

@shonpota asks what I learned in Israeli school

What I learned in Israeli school is..

WHAT I LEARNED IN ISRAELI SCHOOL IS

honestly you're going to be disappointed

tl;dr it's not explicitly hateful, it's much more about emphasizing certain facts and ignoring others to create a narrative and lie by omission.

I don't think it's very different than other western education, but you'll be the judge of that.

I'll try to explain if it makes sense.

First of all, I studied in public school almost a decade ago (jesus), so things might have changed.

So this is the least religious education you can get. More religious schools have been caught with more explicitly hateful material, but that I can't tell you first hand.

Arabic class

From seventh to ninth grade you have mandatory Arabic in school.

Since it's such a short time you really only learn the basics.

The class doesn't really count towards your diploma grade, so you just have to pass it, so most people don't really take it seriously.

There are optional advanced classes to take later on, which in my case were took by Arab Israelis, people with interest in languages and people who wanted to be translators in the IDF.

Civics class

Mostly dry stuff about the system of government, how democracy works, elections, rigjts, stuff like that.

There is big talk about equal rights, mostly mentioning that women had equal rights by law since the founding and that Arab Israelis are regular citizens with equal rights.

Gaza and the west bank weren't mentioned at all, at least when I learned. This is stuff you learn from the news or from your parents.

And of course nothing about systemic racism or anything like that.

You can say that the class shows the ideal clean version of the vision of democracy without actually diving down to what's happening.

Putting "politics in school" is a very controversial subject over here, which I found similar to what's going on with the critical race theory thing in the USA.

Right wingers are in power for a while (and it's getting worse), and for them anything that puts Israel in not a great like is political and should be removed, though it is sometimes used against them too.

It constantly changes and stuff gets added and removed.

Tanach class

It might surprise you that even in secular schools you learn the Tanach (the old testament for you Christians) from first to twelfth grade.

It might surprise you more that we learn it not as a religious text, but much more of an historical one.

It was one of my favorite classes because it actually felt like it encourages skepticism and analysis.

There is talk about how the Torah was probably written by different authors because of contradictions which is literally sacreligous

We talked about which stories are or aren't corroborated by history, how to know about the author by the perspective of the text, events written on from different points of view, etc.

History class

You learn history from first to twelfth grade.

It's very very western.

Starting from Greek to Rome to the middle ages, enlightenment, the French and american revolutions and world wars.

Colonialism is displayed as neutral I guess - just an event that happened. Remember that they don't want opinionated teachers.

We gloss over stuff like slavery and native American genocide when learning about the us, its mostly the revolution and stuff.

Sometimes history from a specific place rotates in, but the rest of the world is mostly reserved for the optional advanced classes.

Of course, there is a big emphasis to ties to Judaism throughout.

Within those periods you learn about what the Jews were up to, usually under the lens of how the current ruler abused them.

World war 2 and the Holocaust obviously is a huge chunk of the material.

You don't get to modern history until like the 10th grade.

And then it's mostly the narrative of the creation of Israel, again viewed neutrally.

It starts from the Dreyfus trial, which had a Jewish officer been accused for a crime he didn't commit.

That caused a reporter named Herzel to think Jews will always be persecuted and to start the Zionist movement with the idea to find a homeland for the Jewish people.

We learn about different proposals for where it could be, raising money, the first Alyot (people who came to Israel to live there).

The Alyot are presented as good things generally, saying that the lands were legally bought and that the people wanted to live side by side with the Palestinians.

Of course the reality is more complicated than that.

We get the Balfour statement, explaining how it's the first time Jews got international recognition for a country but also how it's really non committal.

We learn the efforts to get a country against the British, both the diplomatic and the terrorist actions the early Israeli organizations did.

We learn about the UN division plan, with saying that the Jewish people were happy to share but Palestinians won't come to the negotiations table.

We talk about the declaration of independence when the British left, and how we were immediately attacked by the casus belli of killing all jews by all surrounding countries and still won at the end.

The atrocities of the war aren't mentioned at all.

The Nacba is mentioned, with the word it self constantly getting in and out from the books every year, but it's mentioned subjectively.

As in, "the Palestinians see the events of this war, when Israel took territory in a defensive war and people had to leave their houses as a day of tragedy with the intention to one day return" or something like this.

We learn about immigration after the Holocaust and Mizrahis from Arab countries (like me),surprisingly not shying away from the racism.

The narrative is "there might have been racism then, but now we are all a melting pot of a single culture" or something.

It gets as far as the Six Day War and Yom Kippur war at 1973, anything beyond that is not covered in school.

The main narrative we see about Palestinians is that most of them do want peace and are happy to live side by side with the Israelis, but every time their radical leadership hated their own people, and won't take any compromise.

They want to kill all Israelis and take everything, and Israel is only defending itself.

You can say that's the most radical narrative we learn.

There is little exploration of why, the assumption is anti semetism.

Every war is presented as justified and as part for Israels quest for peace, while being the constant victim.

Inner Palestinian politics aren't discussed, we don't learn their history, their views etc.

That's it I guess?

Feel free to ask anything and I'll try to remember

[emperorblargus]

Why EmperorBlargus thinks you should be voting for Democrats today

So today there's a sort of off-year election day in America, and apparently that involves a bunch of state-governors in certain parts of America and a few state legislature elections. Now once upon a time, I said if I became an American citizen, because political parties go wrong, I'd probably be an Independent. That said, I didn't see ANY election in recent history I wouldn't have voted for the Democrat.

Today, there are some people who think that they can sit this one out, or vote for a third party, and that will work out and stick it to people. My reaction to that is below.

Really, commander? Well, if your "options" are "Democrat, Democrat, Socialist" or "Socialist, Democrat" I can see it's fair game to vote for the Socialist. If there is a seat which is "Republican" and no other candidates, you can - or rather, I should say, SHOULD, if you fulfilled the criteria, have considered running for that seat. But of course, that time is past. Also those aren't the majority of races. In general, you'll have "Democrat, Republican, Third Party" and too much of that time that Third Party is going to drain votes (or be set up TO drain votes) from Democrats. Voting third party isn't going to help, unless there's a "collective epiphany" of a very large number of people and those don't work that way and the risks are way too high.

I repeat, that's not going to work. Too many "third parties" have turned out to be Republicans with the serial numbers filed off and there's plenty more where that came from. Meanwhile, the people having a "collective epiphany" thus far seem to have decided to turn into raging racists, anti-semites, islamophobes, homophobes, transphobes, and borderline genocidal fascists. So I say, to hell with collective epiphanies and to hell with collective spiritual awakenings in the present and now. It ain't working, and the evidence is it ain't working, and the evidence is also it's making things worse. Maybe we need to stop with that, because that strategy seems to be working best for people with the worse instincts, and not bringing out anyone with better instincts. My reaction below as to, literally, seeing this and see people continue to promote this as a viable option.

A reminder that the Republican party is the party trying to ban reproductive care, prosecute people for miscarriages, ban transgender people, expel all people of a certain religion (and remember that will possibly extend to anyone who has ever been involved with that religion OR looks like the "stereotypical" [in the eyes of the people enforcing that rule, a view that doesn't have to have any rooting in reality, c'mon, you guys have already been protesting this] member of that religion, accept into their ranks take funding from open holocaust deniers, is OK with someone who blames wildfires on "Jewish Space Lasers", and generally destroy democracy in America.

BuT BoTh sIdEs, SO I GUESS TODAY'S FINALLY THE DAY YOU'RE GOING TO FUCK EVERYTHING UP to own the libs or something. Really?

A reminder that the current credentials of the average Republican politician seem to be corruption, fraud, damn fraud, and requiring your son to be your accountability buddy so you don't watch pr0n. I don't really see a progressive movement succeeding if it ends up putting these people in charge. You've got to hold onto what you already have, too. Gif related, my feelings.

I'm also starting to highly doubt the leadership capability of many so-called "alternatives". You know, if you want to be a challenge to the Dems, you can't just be someone who is "I'm an Independent". The expectatin is you're going to get better policy than Democrats, but instead both the candidates and the people asking for alternatives keeping making some critical mistakes. For example, like pandering to the "upper left quadrant" of "people who would like to have social safety nets, but only if they were granted exclusively to a small clade". Or to sum up a certain trumpeted "independent" candidate, it's a case of "I Gotta Solution. A Final Solution" populism. The Young Turks "third party" option seems to have an issue with trans people which the old guy in the Presidency doesn't. Cornell West noted getting nominations as an agreed-upon party member would be difficult in terms of ballot access, and instead of rectifying those he made the logical step to run as an independent. RFK, meanwhile, is a vax denier. There's something really unstable, I note, among these people and a drain from movements such as "Occupy Wall Street" to literal neo-nazism, and that has me questioning how viable these really are.

Meanwhile Democrats *HAVE* delivered, such that they can. Biden tried to cancel student debt with considerable success, though SCOTUS is in the way (and that's a Republican problem), reduced inflation, and lead to low unemployment, and an increase in unionization. And no, despite the accusations surrounding Biden and the rail strike in 2022, workers actually did win paid sick leave. Meanwhile, Michigan Democrats with a 1-seat majority on their legislature(s) struck down the "right to work" laws in that state.

So in total, that's it. With Democrats, you get progress in the end, and you maintain protections. With Republicans... you don't, and you might not have anything left at the end of it. There's no third party viability, and believe it or not there's no requirement that there be any viable third party candidates. That's it, and in my view you should give Democrats a chance in this year's elections.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pandemics and peak indifference

When I think about our historical, profound shifts in attitude and discourse, the model I apply is "peak indifference."

Say you have real, existential problem. More often than not, these are systemic problems, and those are the hardest problems.

https://locusmag.com/2016/07/cory-doctorow-peak-indifference/

Not just because systemic problems involve collective action (you can't recycle your way out of climate change), but because the cause-and-effect relationships of systemic problems can't be easily known, so it's hard to know what you need to do to avert the problem.

Systemic problems pose a third difficulty: they enrich small minorities, and those minorities can exploit causal ambiguity to deliberately sow doubt.

To make that more concrete: think about cancer-tobacco denial.

Not everyone who smokes gets cancer. When it does give you cancer, the tumor comes years after the puff that damages your genes. There's lots of social pressure to smoke, and getting your friends to quit is even harder than quitting yourself.

And on top of all of it, the tobacco industry made tons of money from giving us cancer, and they could use some of that to fund doubt-merchants who deliberately worsened the difficulty in linking smoking and cancer.

https://timharford.com/2015/04/cigarettes-damn-cigarettes-and-statistics/

But denial doesn't make problems disappear - it just incurs policy debt, and the interest on that debt is human suffering. Climate inaction, tobacco inaction, and inequality inaction only delay the day of reckoning, and make it worse when it arrives.

That's where peak denial comes in. Over time, the mounting harms from policy debt make it harder and harder to deny the problem, At a certain point - long before we take action - the number of people who deny the problem starts to decline.

This happens naturally, without any need for activist urging. The problem is that the natural peak denial point is often several steps beyond the point of no return. And that's when denial slides into nihilism:

Here's what nihilism looks like:

"Well, I guess these things *did* give me stage 4 lung cancer after all. No point in quitting now."

or

"You were right, rhino populations are in danger! But since there's only one left, let's find out what he tastes like?"

That's why we can't wait for peak denial to arise on its own, why we must hasten its arrival - because we want people to engage with systemic problems *before* the point of no return.

That's where storytelling comes in.

Stories are a fuggly hack, an illusion played on our empathy, wherein we're fooled into caring about the literally inconsequential fate of made-up people (your breakfast yogurt's death was more tragic than Romeo and Juliet's, for it was once alive).

https://locusmag.com/2014/11/cory-doctorow-stories-are-a-fuggly-hack/

But still, made up stories that make vivid and visceral the consequences of inaction can spur us into action, can create a vocabulary for discussing the lived experience of people in a future that has not yet arrived.

Even better than stories, though, are *histories*, the real stories of real people who really suffered through real experiences comparable to those that we face on our horizon. Hence "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

We're very good at forgetting history. The arrival of the covid pandemic was filled with stories of the dimly remembered 1918 influenza pandemic. Our failure to heed those warnings triggered tales of its brutal second wave the following winter.

Herp derp.

Starting in 1968, successive US presidents began to dismantle Glass-Steigel, a corrective put in place after a horrendous finance sector collapse that triggered the Great Depression and WWII. Not one president heeded historians' warnings about the consequences.

Derp.

Dismantling the checks on finance led to successive, worsening crises followed by crushing austerity a deepening inequality. Historical warnings about how this cycle ends with guillotines and Reichstag fires were ignored.

Derp derp derp.

The ideology of finance is a subset of right-wing thought, defined by Corey Robin (in "The Reactionary Mind") as the belief that some people are born to rule, while the rest are born to be ruled over.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-reactionary-mind-9780190692001

This belief has many guises (Dominionism, imperialism, racism, monarchism, fascism, libertarianism) but they all boil down to one thing: eugenics.

It's one thing to believe that markets are meritocratic during a moment of dynamism, when the low-born can rise to riches.

But when their offspring pull up the ladder and social mobility halts, "meritocracy" becomes hereditary: markets elevate the best people, and the best people are all descended from the wealthy, so the wealthy must be of better stock (cue Trump and his talk of "good blood").

Eugenics was once a mainstream American doctrine, and American eugenicists inspired Nazi "race science." But after the Holocaust, eugenics fell into disrepute and we dropped it down the same memory hole that the 1918 flu disappeared into.

But eugenics made a comeback under another guise: the "human capital theory," which holds that markets reward us in proportion to our value to society, and thus the CEO is paid 10,000x more than the janitor because the CEO provides 10,000x more value to the human project.

Eugenics isn't just repugnant, it's also wrong. To understand why, you have to understand how desirable traits are social, not isolated in individuals.

Blair Fix's essay on the link between eugenics and human capitol theory is a must-read:

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2021/01/14/the-rise-of-human-capital-theory/

By way of illustration, Fix describes geneticist William Muir's experiments with improving chicken egg-production through artificial selection, in which he only bred the best layers. The result? A disaster. Egg-laying plummeted.

It plummeted because laying isn't an isolated trait. Chickens that produced the most eggs did so by bullying other chickens out of *their* feed and resources. Selecting for laying selected for bullying and aggression and led to endless chicken-fights and no eggs.

When Muir bred another flock of chickens based on a *group*'s ability to lay, THEN he got his eggs. Egg-laying is a social process.

This story will be familiar to anyone who's worked in a stack-ranked software development shop.

Software managers have long noted that some coders can turn in 10X or even 100X more code than their median colleagues. But attempts to build "superstar" teams that fired all the median programmers end in chaos and destruction.

If your 100X programmer is such a dick that no one can work with them, then their aptitude is irrelevant - you'll never ship.

I assume there are analogies to this in the sporting world, but I am vastly unqualified to discuss sports of any kind.

Despite the bankruptcy of human capital theory, the systemic dangers it posed, and the obvious fact that it was just eugenics dressed up as economics, the theory festered for decades, poisoning our worlds.

The C-suites of every major company are filled with hens whose egg-laying prowess is the result of their suppression of their peers' efficacy - while others whose social integration make them far more productive are relegated to worse jobs or forced out altogether.

The lockdown provoked squeals of outrage from the world's wealthiest people, who insisted that the factories be re-opened. As the slogan of the day went, "If a billionaire needs you to go to work to maintain his fortune, then you are the source of that fortune - not him."

We can't afford to be indifferent to any of our systemic problems any more: not climate science, nor inequality, nor monopoly, nor the lurking eugenics that justifies it all.

[talldarkandroguesome]

1st of Frostfall, Fredas

Well, it was certainly a day full of surprises.

First, while Seryn and I were discussing how she witnessed a terrible misunderstanding with a Hlaalu trader who was convinced that one of the Ahemmusa wise women was, in fact, the most handsome man he had ever seen and he was trying, in the most humoursless pathetic ways to woo her, we saw three figures approaching in House Dunmer attire. No armor, so likely not soldiers, but clearly in clothing typical of someone associated with life in a House city.

Of course, the first time we finally manage to get Seryn off the subject of her concern over her brother’s strange behavior and here comes trouble with the House mer. I had finally managed to get her to really relax and enjoy herself since we arrived, and now this!

As they drew closer, I realized there was something familiar about one of them. As they neared further, I immediately recognized the red hair of none other than Tel! I could easily guess that the two with them were Nenet and Gethan.

Knowing that they would be up to something, I made my approach, with Seryn along with me. I began to explain to Seryn that I knew them and that they were not planning any harm, though they were the type of House mer who was foolish enough to believe their own culture superior and blinded to the value of others. I made some comments about their naive and blind adherence to Almsivi, who they served, and how as long as you left matters of personal belief out of it, there were really of no harm.

Of course, we had approached during my explanation of this, but I had felt no compulsion to hold back, since I was speaking in Velothis. I knew that Tel knew none of the language, most House mer do not bother learning any Velothis at all. Not even those studying Chimer history and religion. Then there was Nenet and she just did not seem the type. It is rare enough for a Dunmer outside of the Velothi to speak Velothis, so a Redguard, even were she to have been raised within Morrowind, was even less likely to understand. So I felt rather confident in speaking freely in Velothis.

Which it turned out, Gethan was able to understand, as he explained immediately upon my finishing to speak.

It was all rather embarrassing, but Seryn took it as a good laugh and Gethan did not make a scene over it all, so really it was just my own shame I had to contend with. Only made worse by the fact that Gethan had been so very polite about the whole thing, making me the seeming arse of the whole affair. Which, of course, I was.

Nenet asked, well, more demanded, to know what I was doing here. I told her I was here on business and asked her what brought her here. She replied in kind, it was business, to which I assured her that there were no cults to be found here. I was immediately defensive of what actions she might be about to take.

To her credit, Nenet said she was not there for cultists. So I asked then what she might be there for. She said they were looking for the Red Exiles, but that the group had been hostile, so they were coming to learn what they could about them.

I inquired what it was about them she would want to know. And so we continued this slow needling of ask and response until it was mentioned that they were interested in a staff that the Red Exiles had acquired from some cultists.

Now it was all beginning to make sense. Sensing there might be more to this than meets the eye, I suggested we take the conversation away from the growing number of eyes that befell us.

Seryn invited the whole lot of them back to her yurt and I am sure she was soon as thankful as I was that we were not where all could see and hear us.

And it was a good thing that we did. For Nenet began to push more and more about the staff and asked if I knew anything about such a thing. I asked if she might describe it for me, noting that Seryn was happier to have me speak, though I looked to her expression to temper my responses, not wishing to divulge anything she was not prepared to share. I kept my answers mostly vague for that reason.

Nenet held out a paper with a drawing of the staff on it. I did think it looked rather familiar. More familiar than the drawing, however, was the handwriting upon the page. I knew it, for I had in my possession another page authored by the same hand. It was Chodala’s.

I read the writing on the page aloud, as if to myself, wanting for Seryn to be able to hear it. I wanted her to know I wanted to share as much with her as possible, while also not needing to make it a whole production. They need not know if she could read or not, nor did I want her to have any cause for embarrassment. The writing mentioned needing to have the Red Exiles get the staff and of its great power. I watched Seryn’s expression out of the corner of my eye, seeing that she was certainly putting together the pieces for herself.

Nenet pressed me again about if I knew of the staff. I told her that I had seen a mer, who was not a Red Exile, carrying the staff away from the Red Exile camp. She tried to push me for more, but I asked her instead if the staff was dangerous.

She was cagey, not wanting to show her hand. So I knew there was something big to be learned and I continued to ask, as though I were very concerned, not that I was not, but I played it up as though perhaps it was a friend of mine.

Still she only tried to dig deeper. I knew that this was going to take a long time and though Tel was there, I felt it was best to use my birthgift to get straight to the point. I told her to explain everything to me.

To say it was a surprise, would be the understatement of an era.

As it turned out, things in Vivec were bad. Very bad. The tremors we had been feelings, simply the warning of things to come. As it turned out, the situation was rather dire. For the staff they were search for had the ability to siphon off Vivec’s power to the wielder. That it had been making Vehk weak and if left as it was, the Warrior Poet would be unable to keep Red Mountain slumbering.

It was interesting to note the look of surprise on both of the out of uniform Armigers. So apparently Nenet was in close association with Vehk. I could not guess why. As Seryn and I exchanged glances, Nenet turned to Tel and Gethan and apologized for not telling them. She said that only the arch canon and one other serving under Vivec knew and that she had been told to stay quiet, lest it alarm Vivec’s followers.

Well, a bit late for that, Nenet. Gethan looked pale and gave a series of whimperous cries, clutching his heart and looking about to faint. It was all a bit over the top and I had to try not to do anything but looked alarmed myself.

In truth, my mind was racing to the consequences this would have, not so much on Housemer religion, but rather, the horrifying realization that if it came to light that the Ashkhan of any Velothi tribe was stealing Vivec’s power it would insight the Houses to arms. Already there is a very tenuous peace in Vvardenfell between the Houses and the tribes, with the Houses wanting to take all of the tribal lands for themselves. This would be all the excuse needed for my bloodshed. If one thinks what happened to the Zainab outside of Balmora was bad, this would be more than just a singular massacre, it would be a holocaust against the Velothi people. They would be far outnumbered and I do not even want to think of the devastation it would cause.

I knew that Seryn, being a diplomat herself, would be thinking much the same as I. Not to mention that, with Ald’ruhn so close to Red Mountain, its eruption would affect this sacred gathering place more than most anywhere else.

Seryn, overcome by emotion, eventually just said she could not believe that her brother would be stealing Vivec’s powers. At that point, I knew that she was going to show her hand as well, so I let her be the one to share her brother’s ambitions, his change in personality, her apprehensions, and even the things which I had discovered at the Red Exile camp. I offered the page I found at her behest.

By the end, Nenet and the others knew about as much as we did. Seryn was clearly upset, though her face did not show it, the change in her posture was clear, so it did not surprise me when she made to leave.

Nenet went after her and I followed her, with the others behind me.

So the whole group of us made our way to the wise woman’s yurt. Only to find that the wise woman and Chodala both had been there while we were all in Seryn’s yurt and had since left. Chodala to prepare for his Nerevarine trials and the wise woman to convene with Azura. 

Seryn made to go after the wise woman and Nenet demanded to go with. Seryn said she could not come and Nanet would not take no for an answer. The whole situation digressed into an argument about who was going to be seeing the wise woman and I could not take the aggression. It was too likely to lead to violence. I have no idea how capable or not Nenet is, since Vehk has put confidence in her.

Besides, there are some aspects of Velothi life that are secret outside of those in particular roles within society. As a wise woman in training, I can only assume that much of what Seryn would want to discuss would need to remain secret from all.

All the while, the bickering continued, Seryn was clearly getting very frustrated by the fact that Nenet would not listen to her reasons for needing to go alone and Nenet was refusing to not do as she was asked of.

So I interceded.

With my birthgift.

I do not know how often I have made use of it on so many people at once. still, I bade everyone to calm down, stock bickering, and to have a proper meal and drink together before further discussion. I figured that some of the nerves might be eased by a rest and nourishment. I felt like I was with the children again when nap time is close and a meal well needed.

We all headed back to Seryn’s yurt. As the host, Seryn went to cook. The others, I kept an eye on as I began to write.

I know things will wear off soon, but I am hoping food and drinks and some time in silence will help them all to understand that cooperation is the only way forward.

[americanredragger]

A Letter to My Mother (That I am too scared to send)

Okay. We’re having this talk now. I have been putting it off because there’s never been a way for me to keep my cool long enough to say it straight. I’ve been nice, I’ve been polite. I’ve walked away from conversations rather than address this directly because I don’t want to lose my mom.

Yesterday was unlike anything in American history. There is no both-sides-ism to be taken here. There is no even vaguely similar violence unleashed by the Left. This isn’t to say that NO violence has ever been unleashed by the left, it can and does happen. But nothing like this. This is unprecedented in both it's scope and audacity.

Unless you can point to an instance in which a Democrat president (or Senator, or Governor) whipped up a riot and unleashed those rioters on the Seat of Government of the United States of America, causing it to be breached and overrun by a hostile force for the first time in 207 years, the things don’t equate at all.

Unless you can point to a riot held by alt-right wingers in which the police cracked down on them HARD to the level of being condemned by the International Criminal Court as bordering on war crimes, the things don’t equate at all.

This was a direct assault on our government by a crowd whipped up by a sitting president. This has never happened before.

The Capitol Police removed the barricades and guided the insurrectionists in.

They chatted and took selfies with them. Exchanged fist bumps with them.

The seditionists were allowed to leave with few arrests, just… gently guided out once the barbarian hordes had their fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaPTjQZBLhQ

And yes, Trump (eventually) told them to go home, but refused to condemn what they'd done and finished his speech with "We love you. You're very special." and continued to refer to his political opponents as "evil".

This is quite literally unprecedented in American history. As in, nothing comes close. That's what "unprecedented" means.

If this had been BLM, the response would have been entirely different. DC would be on lockdown. The police would be bringing WAR to the streets. There would be helicopters, APCs, and beat cops dressed like the US Army rolling into Baghdad in 2003. The DC area hospitals would be overwhelmed with rioters suffering from horrific head and spine injuries from trigger-happy use of rubber bullets and night-sticks. Hell, Trump tear-gassed ACTUAL peaceful protesters last summer just so he could stage an awkward photo op in front of a church, which even the Clergy called him out on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBhYhu7NYI

Don't you DARE equate the two.

I'm tired of the whataboutisms. I'm tired of ignoring the evidence right in front of you. Donald Trump is the single most corrupt, evil man America has ever elected to the presidency. He has worked hard to transform the Republican party into something that actual Holocaust survivors and experts have called "Neofascist" and even less flattering terms.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-history-historian

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/2020/10/25/holocaust-survivor-fears-rising-tide-ugliness-blames-trump-opinion/3740781001/

https://forward.com/scribe/455507/100-year-old-holocaust-survivor-compares-trump-to-hitler/

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article223718330.html

Historians and victims of fascism the world over point to what Trump and his transformed Republican party have been doing as president when asked how the Weimar Republic fell and the Nazi regime rose.

The overwhelming amount of terrorist attacks in the last five years have been Trump supporters (Well over half stemming from that singular cause, with the rest divvied among a MASSIVE swathe of motives), but none more so overwhelmingly so than yesterday's.

There is no left wing equivalent for this in America until you go all the way back to the Weather Underground bombings, and even they were not goaded on by the incumbent politicians of a party.

Your party has been STOLEN from you. The Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is no more. And now it’s stealing you from your children as we have watched you and dad drift further and further into the Hannity-Limbaugh-Carlson echo chamber.

88 years ago next month, right wing extremists set fire to the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic. Over the next few days, they seeded reports that it was actually the communists, maybe socialists, no, it was definitely anarchists… or was it trade unionists? Either way, it HAD to have been The Left who burned down the Reichstag.

This was used to expand and hold onto the power of the Chancellor, a man who need not be named. The next few years proved to be sorrowful for everyone.

That same blame-shifting is already happening again, but it's not in some far away country, it's happening here, where we all thought it couldn't.

This sort of event is unprecedented in the United States, or it was until yesterday. It is not so unprecedented elsewhere.

The only difference is that this attempt failed.

The attempt was made because Trump’s own administration found that this was the most secure election in American history, and Trump’s lawsuits to the contrary were laughed out of court by Trump-appointed judges, including his Supreme Court justices, and his exceedingly incompetent and well-documented attempts to get state officials to overturn a legitimate election all failed.

I still believe you and dad are good, honest people. Patriots who want America to do well in the world.

You can not-like Nancy Pelosi, or Obama, or Biden, or Hilary Clinton. That’s your prerogative, and we’ll agree on plenty in that regard. You’re well within your rights to believe that my preferred economics don’t work. We’ll disagree heartily, but that’s normal for families, especially between parents and their kids.

But your party has been hijacked by neofascists, malignant narcissists, and white supremacists.

I am on my knees BEGGING you to see what so many experts and victims have been warning you about for years.

The Left did not do this.

Trump did.

You have been led astray by an vain, selfish, greedy demagogue, a well documented honorless grifter who embodies everything Christ opposed, and uses people until they have nothing more to give him and discards them. He has cloaked this latest grift in the American flag and set a cross upon it, the only way Fascism ever COULD take root in America, as we saw with Joe McCarthy in the Second Red Scare.

It’s changing you. You can’t see it because it’s happening to you, but those around you can, and it’s scaring us.

Please, finally, truly see this. I want my parents back. You’re going down a path I can’t follow and it’s breaking my heart.

In 2016, I broke from the Republican Party because I saw calamity coming in the nomination of Donald Trump. Only 4 years later, and history has soberingly showed me that I was more right than I could have ever guessed, and my world view has never been the same since. I have looked back at the political opinions I wrote and posted then, and they were so selfish and hateful that it was physically painful for me to put myself through that review. I was a puppet. I couldn’t have seen it at the time because I was at the center of it, and I still live in dread of the monster I would have become if I’d kept to that path. I see that same kind of speech coming from you now - the jingoism, the recycled talking points, the Orwellian denials, and the near-unquestioning loyalty to the stars of the Republican Party and their mouthpieces at Fox, OAN, Newsmax, and the AM Radio circuit. I see the most selfish parts of who I used to be, and I know that deep down, you are not that person because I still see you constantly striving to be a good mother, a good Christian, and a model human being.

I’m imploring you to finally look at the evidence, the boundless clear and present evidence, and see what men like Gingrich, McConnell, and Trump have turned your party into. What they are turning you into, the same as they tried with me.

I know you wouldn’t be happy as a Democrat - I myself am only begrudgingly a Democrat because the system doesn’t allow for a viable alternative (and that’s a whole different issue that deserves it’s own library of articles). I’m not trying to convert you. I just need to know that you can look at the evidence with your own eyes like I did and see that you’ve been played for a sucker by men who cry wolf and distract you by having you chase shadows while they line their pockets with money and power. Please stop listening to these monsters, stop swallowing their poison. I know how easy it is to be in that world because I myself have lived in it for most of my life. I fully understand the appeal: there are easy answers for everything, you always know who the enemy is and who your supposed allies and benefactors are. But I also left that behind, and yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot, and frequently. But despite the pain, I know I am better off for having done it.

Yes, I have to question the people who claim to represent me more. I have to question EVERYTHING more because I now know that nothing is as clear cut as I thought it was - once removed from Plato’s Cave, I no longer had the luxury of a simple world. And yet I am still happier because I am so much more my own person now. Yes I falter, and worse still, some days I fall back into the old ways of thinking, but now I recognize that for what it is and it is easier to deal with.

You’ll always be a Conservative, Mom, but I see you on the path that I was on, a path that nearly robbed me of my critical thinking and objectivity, and one which would have weaponized my sense of patriotism to benefit people who are not me. You have kept that course far longer than I. Please put aside the whataboutisms, the both-sides-isms, and finally see the evil, ravenous monster that killed your party from the inside and now wears its skin to deceive you into feeding it further.

I don’t ask that you agree with my politics or economics. I AM begging you though to split from this political machine which is changing you into something I no longer recognize. I want the parents I used to have, the ones who could look at things objectively and form their own opinions instead of repeating talk show buzz lines.

Please, recognize the shadows on the wall of the cave that wicked men are showing you are NOT reality. Please, join me in the truth of the world outside.

[thewebcomicsreview]

Can you maybe contextualize the Homestuck epilogue for someone who has never read Homestuck but is curious what all the hullabaloo is about?

It’s 200,000 words following 8,000 pages of comic, so I’m not sure if I can really explain it “simply”, but I’ll do my best. *ahem*

Spoilers, obviously. 

tl;dr;, by the way, I actually really liked it. But I can see why a lot of people didn’t. 

So, I can, have, and will rant about the myriad of reasons everyone hated the ending, but for the sake of context let’s only focus on the main ones:

1. The climax of the story was meant to be “John masters his powers, goes back in time, and undoes a lot of the terrible things that happen”. This didn’t at all feel like a climax, so everyone expected a “real” climax and was confused when we didn’t get one. Worse, because the solution to, say, Rose’s alcoholism was that John changed things so that she never started drinking, it felt less like characters overcoming their struggles and more like the characters we loved being replaced with alternate, better versions, and we never saw how things went for the “real” characters (John’s main change, preventing Vriska’s death in Act 5, invalidates something like 15% of the entire comic!). 

2. Because the climax fell so flat and the big bad wasn’t defeated (and because [S] Collide ended with the music turning all sinister), everyone went in to Act 7 expecting one last huge twist. But while we were given enough information to figure out the basic gist of how Lord English was defeated, we don’t actually see it.The above screenshot, of Caliborn powering up into his Final Form, comes in the last fifty seconds of Homestuck.  

So, that’s kind of the context of the ending. Everyone went in expecting like a full act, was wildly confused that Act 7 was a victory lap, and then we all kind of figured out eventually what Hussie was going for and we were like “Oh. Okay” in a monotone. So, everyone hoped for the epilogue to “fix” the plot, but the plot wasn’t so much broken as it was badly told.

Phew. Okay, now lets talk about the epilogue. 

So, John is given the choice of whether to actually go back into the comic and kill the bad guy or not, represented as a choice of eating meat or candy for lunch. The canon, alpha timeline choice is to kill Lord English (”meat”), and the choice to stay behind and leave a time loop/plot thread unclosed (”Candy”) creates a doomed timeline. Doomed timelines in Homestuck exist as physical bubbles you can fly to, so the two “timelines” are really physical places in Paradox Space. There are three such location in the epilogue 

1. The “meat” timeline, which is the actual “canon” alpha timeline with no unbroken time loops, where most of the Meat Epilogue takes place. It takes place in the normal universe 

2. The furthest ring, a void above and around all timeline bubbles where John fights Lord English. This is normally where all the doomed timelines are, but they are getting sucked into a black hole that’s sweeping out all the “irrelevant” stuff

Nepetaquest 2019 was never meant to be

3. The “candy” timeline, which is doomed, irrelevant, and thus sucked into the black hole. The whole thing looks like this

The reason I’m explaining all this is because the two epilogues are actually one epilogue, and one affects the other such that you need to read them both. 

In the Candy timeline, Dirk immediately realizes that he’s no longer canon/alpha, and immediately kills himself. Rose and Kanaya are happily married and adopt a troll. Roxy goes all stepford wife and decides all she really wants is to crank out babies with John. John is all “you seem to be wildly out of character for reasons that won’t be explained but okay”. Jade, Dave, and Karkat have a miserable polyamorous relationship where the boys don’t admit they want to each other’s dicks but are willing to settle on Jade’s furry knotted dog penis, which she apparently grew after becoming a dog girl in [S] Cascade

Pictured: The exact moment in Homestuck that Jade Harley grew canine genitalia. I had a print of this artwork and I’ll never look at it quite the same again

There’s relationship drama, but the most important part is Jane, who is now TrumpHitler for basically no reason,. She marries Jake but Gamzee cucks him and, well

There’s a scene of Jake talking to Jade and thinking about maybe murdering a baby while his wife has rape-play sex with a clown in the next room. We don’t have time to unpack all that, because Jane is also TrumpHitler now, and sets out to commit a literal holocaust on all the Trolls for….um…..well for no reason. She’s just evil now. Jade’s corpse crashes from the sky, which is a shock to everyone, most of all Jade. Then Aradia and Sollux show up and Jane’s corpse comes to life as a god and everyone kind of just….nods…..and ignores it. The JadeCorpse is possessed by a version of Calliope who’s basically God, whom Aradia serves. Calliope explains that nothing in this timeline matters and it would normally just dissolve but she’s keeping it around because letting everyone dissolve into nothing when you can stop it seems like kind of a bitch thing to do and also she needs somewhere for Lord English’s body to land. Everything in Candyland gets as comically terrible as possible, full-on civil war. John has an existential crises about being irrelevent but gets over it, and Calliope finally finds Lord English and eats him, gaining the power to escape the black hole. Somewhere all this Dave meets up with Barack Obama (??!!?!?!) who is a god (!!!!!!!!!!!) that fucked Dave’s bro (!efefiebnfuewf) and merges all Daves together into one Ultimate Dave that he puts in a robot. Davebot, Aradia, and Calliope all leave the black hole and close the door behind them such that nothing inside (which includes the “canon” Vriska and every single alternate Timeline that existed or will ever exist) can ever get out to interfere with the canon timeline ever again. 

Also 16-year-old Vriska fucks 40-year-old Gamzee and is so embarrassed about it that she kills him. 

Feel free to take a break here

==>

In the Meat timeline, Dirk has ascended and god from God-Like-Thor to God-Like-God, and can now manipulate the story in a fourth-wall breaking way that’s effectively nigh-omniscience and mind control. He’s also evil now, but that makes more sense then Jane being Hitler. 

John recruits the pre-retcon versions of Dave, Rose, and Jade, who with John are the closest thing to the “original” versions of the main four that Homestuck is gonna give us at this point. They fight Lord English and successfully boot him into the black hole, but all die in the process. John is mortally wounded but survives long enough to bang Terezi in the back of his dad’s car and get them both home (said car ends up in Candyland, where Candy John finds it and recognizes Terezi’s cum because thanks Hussie). Jade lives long enough that she could get to Earth C herself, but this version of Jade doesn’t even know about Earth C and decides to die via black hole. Dirk tries to stop this, but Calliope, who is more powerful than Dirk, pulls her in

It is indeed to late, and OG! Jade gets sucked into the black hole, crashes into Candyland, and leaves behind a fresh corpse for Calliope to control and all the people in Candyland to be weirdly blase over because deep down they know their world doesn’t matter. Having control over this Jade lets her possess the alpha Jade in Meatworld, which in turn lets her influence things there. She and Dirk fight about who gets to be president of earth (which doesn’t seem important unless you read Candy and know what president Jane will do), and Dirk manages to tranquilize Jade and keep Calliope from affecting anything else. 

Jane becomes president of Earth and starts off and the path of becoming God Empress of Mankind. John dies, and we get more than a hint that Dirk killed him for being insufficiently grateful of their paradise planet

With things on Earth taken care of, Dirk mind controls Rose into become his (sex?) slave, and mind controls Kanaya into thinking that’s cool. He tells Terezi (who he can’t control, since Mind is her power) that if she comes with they can maybe revive John, and they all home into a spaceship and fuck off to a new planet. Dirk is the new Lord English, Jane is the new Condesce, and Rose -now a dreambot - is the new Handmaid. And Terezi is….also there. They find a new M-Class planet and set up to evolve some life there for a Sburb game. On earth, now of of range of Dirk’s mind control, everyone realizes that him kidnapping Rose was actually kind of fucked up, and they hop a spaceship to chase after them, with Jade-possessed Calliope giving them advice.  

And that’s the epilogue! Dirk has kidnapped Rose and become unto god, and is setting up a nefarious plan we don’t know the details of, and a the heroes are racing to stop him. Good night everybody!

I’m assuming there’s going to be an Epilogue Epilogue, because this was just a straight-up cliffhanger, and I’ll guess I’ll see when I think when that happens or when it becomes clear that won’t happen.

Hopefully that was easy enough to follow, I did my best. 

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 3: Insane Mindscrew Haymakers (Part 2)

CHEL: Rose finds a transportaliser platform in the centre of the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: The sylladex misadventures come to something this time. Jasper’s corpse lands on the pad.

CHEL: The dead cat vanishes; Rose assumes it was vapourised but we know better, though we don’t see where it went. She finds an unlocked hub and plugs in, noticing another ominous countdown on the wall, with only three minutes left till the lab will be “UNESTABLISHED”.

Years in the future again, PM beheads the worm creature, which turns out to be a robot. The bunker landed on its side so PM stands on a pile of mailboxes to press the button, which causes more robot worms to emerge from beneath the bunker, pushing it upright, and a propeller to emerge from the top and carry it away.

Dave’s strife with Bro continues, getting more and more ridiculous and animesque, until Dave ends up plummeting down the stairwell. In a realistic work, this could quite easily break his neck, but here we just get some comical flailing and a SBaHJ IT KEEPS HAPPENING macro. Again, Dave looks more angry than afraid.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 8

FAILURE ARTIST: I think Hussie said the Bro slicing the Abscond box is symbolic of the trap of child abuse and shows this guardian fight isn’t like the others but it is still an animesque fight that ends with a fucking meme.

CHEL: Yeah, he seems to be expecting us to pick up on these details which don’t mean anything until he actually explains them, which would be fine and in fact clever if they didn’t conflict so strongly with what’s actually noticeably shown. If he wanted us to take it seriously, he’d have done better not to put the Abscond button there at all.

Rose finds, in the lab, a console showing SBurb sessions in the northeastern US where her home is located, monitoring the time to impact of their respective meteors. There is a large cluster of already-landed ones around her house, with a much, much bigger one centred directly on the lab, with an even bigger one centred on the house. She zooms out, and finds the second-biggest upcoming impact in the world is heading for Texas, while one bigger by an order of magnitude will later land in the middle of the Pacific. "Oh look, up in the sky/ It's a hole about the size of Texas..."

"Circus Contraption - Hot Potato" (Watch on YouTube)

Checking on John’s house, Rose finds it overrun by imps, the building shaking violently. Investigating this, she finds the ogre fight; John is at least getting a few blows in now, but they’re still not doing much good. Nannasprite is able to provide support with eye beams, but the ogres are still standing, and Rose’s attempt to drop a fridge on one is useless too. Nannasprite’s teleportation proves more useful, allowing John to take a flying leap out of a hovering oven to strike with greater force and allowing her to drop a full avalanche of household appliances on the ogre. With Rose’s assistance providing him a platform to bounce off again, John strikes the final blow on one ogre, exploding it into grist pieces bigger than himself, and Nannasprite and John occupy the other ogre until Rose drops the alchemiter on it.

FAILURE ARTIST: Seeing a fight like this not long after the Bro and Dave fight makes it hard for me to take the serious one seriously. John should be dead.

CHEL: John has a backup healer and Dave doesn’t, but yeah, cartoon physics prevail here.

Rose checks in, explaining that Dave’s not connected yet, but that she’s determined that activating the cruxtruder does not actually cause the meteor to strike. John levels up to BOY-SKYLARK and collects tons of grist and boondollars, although he still doesn’t know what those actually do.

You can't wait to find out what amazing items this new supply of grist will be just barely insufficient to produce.

Hehehe. We’ve all been there.

John sees that more grist fell down to the platform below, including one huge piece stuck in the hole leading into Dad’s room.

One of those big SOUR GRAPE ELECTRIC HOLOCAUST FRUIT GUSHERS is jammed in the hole in the platform. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 9

Yes, because Holocaust references are a perfect way to describe candy flavours. Technically “holocaust” can refer to, I quote from dictionary.com, “a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire”, and I’m guessing it’s a parody of all the flavour names with words like “explosion” in them, but, especially when it’s not obviously uncapitalised, that’s very much not what the immediate association of the term is!

FAILURE ARTIST: John asks Nanna why she doesn’t just throw him up to the gate and she says it’s important he build up himself. Though later we do see a character that just jumps up to the gate.

Then we switch to a mysterious castle all in purple. Dad is fighting some imps with shaving cream. A new yet somehow familiar character wearing harlequin clothes watches with disgust both Dad and John on strange window screens.

We cut away yet again to Peregrine Mendicant. PM is still stuck in the mobile station with a letter addressed to David Brinner. There was a real person who went by the alias Doctor Brinner on his Portland-area radio show where he played a mad scientist. Dr. David Brinner is also a comic Hussie made before Homestuck. I’ve never read it myself. I didn’t even know it existed until I googled David Brinner.

Anyway, PM refuses to open this letter and gives stirring speeches that sound like they come from a movie (Kevin Costner’s Postman?) but I don’t think they do.

BRIGHT: PM believes very strongly in the purpose of mail delivery as the bedrock of civilisation. It comes across as funny, but not as mocking.

FAILURE ARTIST: PM then turns to the terminal. Jade appears on a screen shrouded in green static. PM finds Jade familiar. Unfortunately, before PM can converse with Jade, the terminal explodes.

Cut back again to Rose in the lab. There’s lots of cutesy pink little girl stuff down there that Rose decides to ignore. Why is it down there? Did Mom expect Rose to live there one day?

CHEL: I thought it was supposed to signal that Mom was living down there herself.

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, Rose also finds a mutant cat.

We cut away again to John contemplating going into his father’s bedroom through a hole in the roof. He decides to do it.

Cut to a fireplace with a portrait of Jade above it. It looks similar to Nanna’s shrine, minus the urn. But Jade isn’t dead, is she? She scampers right into the room the next panel. She arms herself with a huge rifle and tries to sneak across the room. However, her Grandpa appears, shadowed by the huge fire that suddenly lit up in the fireplace. She tries to run away only to fall asleep.

We cut to Dave’s final round - or rather, Jade fighting her Grandpa. Who, in another surprise, is a taxidermed corpse.

She talks to him like he’s alive, though after it, she says he was easier to deal with when he was alive. This disturbing state of affairs is never treated seriously.

CHEL: This, more than anything else, is why we set up the ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY count. Horrible as Bro would be by any realistic standards, at least Dave’s guardian is obviously living and Dave is not merrily talking away to a dead person. We later find out that Jade was the one who taxidermied Grandpa, while she was barely more than a toddler. Not only was she actually able to do this to professional standards, at an age when she shouldn’t have been handling sharp objects at all, but she displays no trauma from it, nor from having had to raise herself. And yet we’re supposed to take Dave’s issues seriously, and to a much lesser extent Rose’s, with no real indication that they’re any different.

TIER: It's one thing when an author's intended depiction of “an abusive household” for the most part flies over people's heads due to the absurdity of the whole situation when it initially got presented, that happens sometimes! Especially when one factors in Bro's total screen time, how he generally ticks the boxes for “absurd but really cool” guy visually, and how late in the game this knowledge was spelled out. It all comes together to make the whole Strider situation kinda come out of left field to judge people for finding the absurd situation funny.

But when it's sitting right next to the arguably worse scenario (stuffed.dead.guardian.) and the latter pretty much never gets brought up while the former gets a big ol’ spotlight shining down on it, yeah that's what the folks call Fucking Weird and in my personal opinion, suspect Ò_Ó.

CHEL: While I can’t really state one way or the other at this point, I do think it’s worth considering a reason that has already been brought up by a non-Homestucker; in the scenarios we’re not supposed to take seriously, the children are girls. I doubt this was even slightly what Hussie intended, but it certainly explains a lot about the fandom’s reactions. The more likely scenario regarding the canon explanation is probably that the ones we’re not supposed to take seriously are not Hussie’s self-insert.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 9

BRIGHT: Not to mention, Jade grew up on an island in the middle of the ocean, physically isolated from any other people and with only an animal for company. There are known cases of children who grew up in similar circumstances in real life. Suffice to say, it generally does not end well.

You could argue that Jade is pretending her Grandpa is alive because she’s lonely and needs the company, but this is in no way implied by the text.

At any rate, Jade informs her grandfather that the rifle she has is perfectly adequate for killing things and she doesn’t need his oversized blunderbuss.

CHEL: To be strictly fair, we do later find out she had some contact with other people, but not in a way which I feel would be a substitute for having a living human parent in the “real” world.

FAILURE ARTIST: With Jade out the door, we go again to PM. They are fine except for some cartoon burn marks and a fire on their hood. The metal snake saves their precious mailbox.

BRIGHT: It earns PM’s affection for doing so.

Back at the lab, Rose utterly fails to ignore the four-eyed mutant kitten. She carries it over to a peculiar machine that turns out to be another Appearifier. This one is locked onto her cat, Jaspers, nine years ago. Not only was he alive, but the younger Rose was holding a psychotherapy session with him.

Rose attempts to appearify Jaspers, but since this would cause a time paradox, the machine leaves Jaspers in place and instead produces a ‘Paradox Clone’, which swiftly collapses into green slime. The machine next to the appearifier sucks up the paradox sludge, analyses its genetic sequence, and spits out another cat, rather more mutated than the last, in a process referred to as ‘Ectobiology’.

CHEL: John’s screen name, we remind you, is “ectoBiologist”, so it seems he heard of the concept somewhere, perhaps?

BRIGHT: On the appearifier’s screen, Jaspers reveals a stunning secret to young Rose, and is appearified to an unknown location before he can clarify anything. Two weeks later, his corpse reappeared. Oddly, the appearifier can’t see his whereabouts for the intervening period.

It can, however, see where his body went when it landed on the pad earlier! Rose appearifies the corpse and hightails it out of the lab, using the transportaliser to make her escape before the meteor can hit.

FAILURE ARTIST: If you click on the pink horseshoe that appears at the end of the Rose: Fast Forward To Now flash, there’s a little animation of Rose enjoying Maplehoof. I guess she’s making up for the loss of her precious Jaspers.

BRIGHT: We make a brief detour back to Jade, who’s searching for Becquerel. Two new things about Jade’s mysterious abilities: One, Becquerel is invisible to them. Two, this is unusual enough that it used to disturb her. Becquerel appears briefly in the background, and there’s clearly something strange about him…

CHEL: Additionally, it was clearly his face that was carved on the pumpkin we saw earlier, and he looks canine but it’s hard to make out details at this point...

BRIGHT: But before we can find out more, the comic jumps back to John.

Now in his Dad’s room, John is struck by an unwelcome discovery — there aren’t any clowns. Not on posters, no figurines. His father’s briefcase, rather than being full of the tools of a street performer, holds only boring papers and spreadsheets. In fact, the room is pretty boring...like his Dad is just a normal businessman?

"[S] John: Examine your dad's room." (Watch on YouTube)

FAILURE ARTIST: I wish more had been made of Bing “Douchebag” Crosby in this comic but that’s just me being an old movie nerd.

BRIGHT: While John attempts to recover from the BSOD this causes, his father breaks out of a jail cell armed with a safe. This is watched with displeasure by another black figure in brightly-coloured clothing, whose name is not Spades Slick. (He likes the ring of that, though.) No, he’s Archagent Jack Noir, and he oversees the affairs of a dark kingdom through three fenestrated walls.

CHEL: He usually has a fourth one but it got stolen.

FAILURE ARTIST: Those fingers typing the name Spades Slick are a suspicious color...

BRIGHT: He also despises the jester outfits everyone has been forced to wear, and refuses to don his comical hat until the Queen hijacks his fenestrated wall and orders him to wear it. The wall cuts back to Dad, who has now disarmed an especially burly-looking agent and is punching him in the head.

CHEL: Jack Noir makes mention of his carapace at this point; I don’t remember if his species is also referred to as “carapaces” in the comic but that’s the name the fandom knows them by. Guess we’ll see if they are as we go on.

BRIGHT: Meanwhile, John opens some birthday presents he found in his Dad’s room! He gets some Fruit Gushers, a very dapper suit, and best of all, an Array Fetch Modus, which lets him retrieve an item from any card in his deck! Of course, this would be too straightforward, so he combines it with his other Fetch Modii until he gets something properly inconvenient.

FAILURE ARTIST: How much do Modii cost and does everyone in this universe have one?

CHEL: The implication is tech like this is how Skaianet made its money, but since we never really see anyone who’s not involved somehow with the game, we don’t really get a good sense of the company being part of the world, so we don’t know. If I had to guess, though, I’d think getting the sylladex in the first place costs a big lump sum and then the various fetch modii cost much smaller amounts, sort of like apps on a phone or programs on a computer.

When prompted, John closely examines the Fruit Gushers box, this flavour being “MASSIVE TROPICAL BRAIN HEMORRHAGE”. Tasty…? John thinks so. However, in the corner of the box is a small, easily-missed logo…

THE HEINOUS BATTERWITCH HAS HER GNARLED CLAWS IN EVERYTHING.

After the destruction of his planet, the disappearance of his father, the appearance of his ghost grandma, and fighting numerous monsters, THIS is what finally sends John over the edge into a full-out meltdown, despite the onscreen caption declaring that THIS IS STUPID.

FAILURE ARTIST: I actually have a box of Fruit Gushers signed by Andrew Hussie.

CHEL: Back on the island, Jade, accompanied by dramatic music, attempts to retrieve a blue package from the ruins, but just as she reaches it, Becquerel appears between her and it, and we snap right back into STRIFE!

"[S] Jade: Retrieve package." (Watch on YouTube)

Becquerel, as we can now see clearly, is an enormous white dog, lacking facial features of any kind and emitting crackling green lightning - worthy of the description “devilbeast”, I think. Jade aims her rifle at his head and takes multiple shots, but none hit. The first heats up and melts into nothingness. When the second is fired Becquerel turns into green fire and next frame he and Jade are both riding on the now-enormous bullet which carries them across the lagoon to the other side of the island. Becquerel teleports the third bullet into space and himself and Jade to the top of the frog building, and he teleports himself out of the way of the fourth, the background flashing through several different locations. Finally, Jade shoots a bullet in the opposite direction with the instruction GO FETCH!, which Bec does, giving Jade time to grab the package. She rewards Bec for fetching with the irradiated steak and announces that he is a GOOD DOG, BEST FRIEND. After dancing around in celebration, she very abruptly falls asleep again, and Bec scoops her up on his back, takes her back to bed, and tucks her in.

FAILURE ARTIST: The music in Jade: Retrieve Package

is another replacement. Currently it’s An Unbreakable Union by Robert Blake but originally it was Mutiny by Bill Bolin. The original is very retro science fiction and the replacement is safari.

CHEL: For the record, real dogs are not horses and are not built to carry people like that, even very small children can damage a large dog’s back by riding it, but given Bec’s abilities, I don’t think that applies to him.

Rose comes out the other side of the transportaliser, she and the cat having both kept their atoms unmingled, and discovers she’s back in the house, in the room she thought was her mother’s bedroom. It seems the cutesy pink bed and stuff in the lab was in fact her mother’s bedroom, and this room is a well-stocked bar.

You decide not to be especially melodramatic about this revelation.

Good idea, Rose; there isn’t time, as the lab is promptly unestablished by a meteor, sending flaming debris flying through the window. The booze-filled room is especially endangered by this, so Rose decides to flee.

John punches some more cards and complains that he’s the one doing the work while Rose is just messing around on her computer, while Jade dreams and little red lights on her bedposts glow. A metal cabinet in the corner of her room has similar red lights on top, and it bursts open, revealing a Jade-shaped robot.

Sudden cut to a mysterious copy of Jade’s bedroom, except with pink walls, in which Jade stands, wearing a golden dress. Back in her real room, the DREAMBOT stands in the same position. The gold-clad Jade is, we find, a depiction of Jade in her dream. Dream Jade tries to get into bed, but complains of a heavy weight pressing down on her, as the robot is copying her actions and is now lying on top of the real sleeping Jade. Instead, she decides to fly, which of course she can do since it’s a dream (and the robot has jet propulsion).

The dream room also contains the blue package, addressed to “GG” from “GT”. This isn’t John’s current handle, but she knows it’s from John, and that she must deliver it to somewhere else without opening it.

Flashback to the previous winter. In a shot of John’s window, we see his calendar and the edges of some of his posters. The calendar is marked with smiley faces in party hats in green, red, and purple, marking Jade, Dave, and Rose’s birthdays, but more noticeably, there are creepy faces with jester hats and huge teeth scrawled on the wall and posters. I didn’t notice it until just now, but there are some purple lines on the arm of one of the poster characters which might just be part of a drawn-on clown outfit but from this vantage point look like self-harm scars. Brr. Ominous.

John at this point in time is going by “ghostyTrickster” on Pesterchum, hence the “GT” nametag on the package. He’s chatting to Jade about having sent off everyone’s birthday gifts, and how he hopes Jade’s will “help you solve those problems you’ve been having lately”. John is embarrassed to realise it will take much longer than he thought for the package to reach Jade’s island, but she assures him it will arrive “exactly when it needs to”.

BRIGHT: With the reveal of John’s previous handle, and from the characters in the Trollslum, we also get the theme of the handle initials being the letters of DNA. (GCAT.)

FAILURE ARTIST: Jade complains about “trolls” and we have the first time this beloved and perhaps overshadowing species is named. However, John calls the “trolls” the r-slur so that’s another point.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 10

CHEL: Also, the trolls are why he changed his handle, in an attempt to avoid them bothering him.

FAILURE ARTIST: We go back to current day. John is peeved at the graffiti on his posters. He thinks it’s the imps. However, we just saw it was there months before. What is going on, hmmm?

Rose decides to name the cat Vodka Mutini. She then talks with John. Rose wonders where Dave is and John figures that Bro is kicking his ass. Considering that this ass-kicking is later treated as serious abuse, this is a callous thing for a friend to say.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 10

CHEL: I’d also say that counts as HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING. There’s not much an internet friend can do about someone’s abusive situation on the other side of the country but they could at least support Dave and tell him to call the police, if it is supposed to be that bad. Or at least, you know, be worried. Then again, Dave might not have told them what the ass-kicking entails, but Rose knows about his brother’s websites, and given that we know Bro made at least one film in which Dave was involved and may or may not have been on camera, and the film certainly would show the state the apartment was in…

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 4

FAILURE ARTIST: Anyway, when John complains about his posters being defaced, Rose says they always looked that way. John naturally freaks out at this creepy revelation.

We cut to WV. They are trying to get down from the mobile station without sacrificing the MAYORAL SASH. While working the Appearifier, they get John’s present with an envelope addressed to “Mister Mayor”. After WV gets more cable, they rappel down the mobile station with the package under their arm.

Meanwhile, a figure in yellow caution tape watches WV through a sniper rifle. This is Aimless Renegade, a wonderful but forgotten character.

We go back to John and Rose. John discusses the mystery of the defaced posters while he futzes around with the Alchemiter. Rose thinks that John had blocked out the memory of defacing the posters and the revelation that his father isn’t who he thought he was unblocked his memory. She thinks maybe his father thought he was interested in clowns because John drew clowns everywhere. Yet John also wrote “LAME KID”? Maybe Dad should have taken John to therapy.

CHEL: “Lame kid” with arrows pointing down at his bed, to be exact, among other insults, and the clown faces don’t look like the product of someone who liked clowns at all!

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 11 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 5

Yet Dad Egbert is supposed to be the good parent of the group, so here we go with a new count:

RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1

This one’s primarily for romantic relationships, but other relationship fumbles apply too.

Rose thinks that the drawings are the result of John trying to express something subconscious, possibly a repressed past memory. John changes the subject to the upward building process; Rose complains that chimneys weren’t meant to bear such a weight, and considers switching to walls now they can get grist more easily, but she’s running out of time as the house proper is now on fire. John blames Dave, so I think we can assume that either they don’t know his brother forces him into swordfights or they don’t think it’s a problem. Which one is hard to determine.

FAILURE ARTIST: We cut to Jade playing a bass solo so advanced it doesn’t have a bass line. Another Bolin replacement. We find out Dream Jade is in a castle on a planet that’s a gold copy of the one Jack Noir and co are on. While flying around, she sees an inhabitant that looks familiar. CHEL: This is what I was referring to when I said Jade did have some contact with people; she is able to contact the carapaces in her dreams. However, the carapaces are, as we’ve seen from WV and company, somewhat childlike in behaviour, living in a society that’s nothing like Earth’s, biologically not the same as humans so they couldn’t easily advise her if she got ill or injured, and they don’t appear to be able or willing to speak, at least not most of the time and/or in a way the humans could understand, not to mention they would have no way to physically assist her in the waking world so she’d still have to raise herself from a very young age. Hence, why I don’t think they’re a substitute for an actual human parent.

[scripttorture]

First of all, thank you for your incredible work. I am in awe of this blog and the time you must put into it. I have a question about the aftermath of torture. I am writing a story about a character who was tortured by the secret police and then sent to a labour camp for several years. During that time, he has been tortured on a number of occasions, mainly as a form of punishment. Even day to day, it is a very unhealthy place 1/3

(restrictive food rations, washing facilities treated as a luxury rather than a necessity, poor access to health-care etc.) In the story, my character has just been released, and he is both physically and mentally unwell. My question is about the onset of posttraumatic symptoms. My understanding is that some posttraumatic symptoms are initially adaptive. 2/3For instance, being on edge and thinking people might be about to kill you is an understandable, even helpful thing to feel on a battlefield. However when you are not in that environment and that still sticks, it becomes maladaptive. How would the way you deal with trauma of past torture differ if you are somewhere unsafe like a labour camp as opposed of somewhere safe (e.g. with family)? Might new symptoms start appearing after release? ¾ (previously 3 - messed up my count)  Might new symptoms start appearing after release? Might they change how they present? My MC’s trauma is going to be new to his family who have not seen him since before his arrest, but to what extent might them be new to *him* too? Thank you! 4/4

-

That’s an interesting question. Keep in mind that I’m not a mental health professional so my answer is based on a combination of survivor accounts, personal experience with mental health issues and what mental health professionals say about survivors.

 I don’t tend to think of symptoms as being adaptive while I’m writing but that’s very much bound up in how I tend to approach writing symptoms. If thinking about symptoms as adaptive and becoming maladaptive helps you then by all means use that approach. I think you can make that argument for most of the common torture symptoms.

 I’m not sure if it’s accurate to say that new symptoms appear after release, I think it might be more accurate to say new symptoms are discovered after release.

 What I mean by that is that symptoms don’t suddenly pop up out of nowhere, but they might suddenly become more apparent or consciously recognised as conditions.

 For instance- a lot of forced labour camps use dogs as guard animals and occasionally weapons. Within the camp it just makes sense to avoid the dogs. But back out in the world the character might suddenly become aware that dogs make him feel anxious, that barking causing panic attacks. And that would be a lot more difficult to deal with in a culture where dogs are companion animals that can be encountered virtually anywhere at virtually any time.

 He might also discover aspects of his symptoms that he just didn’t have a chance to notice existed before.

 For example depression often causes problems around food. It’s very common for people with depression to feel nausea and have difficulty eating. It’s also very common for people to over eat and make themselves feel sick.

 In a highly regimented environment where food is strictly controlled your character may not have experienced that particular aspect of depression. Which means any depression-related issues around food could take him completely by surprise.

 It’s also very possible for presentation of symptoms to change with time and with environment.

 If I keep using depression as an example; let’s say the character and his family recognise that his problems are probably depression and he goes for treatment quite quickly. Let’s say he gets a prescription and he’s one of the lucky people who finds an effective medication first time. As the depressive symptoms ease he might expect life to get easier- only to find that now he’s not in deep depression most of the time other symptoms become more apparent and seem more severe.

 I say ‘seem more severe’ because I’m not actually sure if symptoms really become worse in these scenarios or if they just seem worse because the survivor doesn’t have as many coping strategies for these other symptoms.

 I guess what I’m driving at here is that yes I think a lot of these symptoms and behaviours could be (or at least feel) new to the character. But they don’t necessarily have to be new to the readers.

 Establishing some of these behaviours and thought patterns beforehand or just hinting at them is perfectly realistic and can be a good narrative choice.

 I get the impression that any huge change, especially if it’s unexpected, can have a negative impact on mental health. I’m saying this because I think it’s worth stressing that going from one safe environment to another safe environment would have a negative effect on most mentally ill people.

 Suddenly being in control of his routine, the type and amount of food he can eat, access to hygiene facilities; all of that is a positive change but it would also be a stressful one. A lot of survivors from this kind of forced labour scenario seem to struggle with that sudden shift from having no real control of their lives to being in control of everything again.

 The impression I get is that at first it’s good, it’s a relief. But after a while it can become a source of stress, especially if the character’s symptoms involve memory problems.

 For instance perhaps he finds he likes spending a long time in the shower now. A lot of people find hot water soothing and it would be perfectly normal for him to indulge in something that was denied him.

 But if it becomes something that he turns to often then it could easily go past the point of soothing or indulgence and start having a negative impact on his life.

 ‘Why were you later for this appointment?’ ‘Well I was having a shower’ That lasted two hours. Why’s the water bill so high? Why’s his skin red and flaky?

 And then the behaviour starts becoming stressful, perhaps even a guilty cycle.

 Learning to establish a routine of his own again could be quite difficult. Especially if his family have little experience with mental health problems.

 Because it’s hard to tell when it’s ‘right’ to let someone have a lie in (he’s been through so much, let him rest) and when it’s an extension of depressive behaviour driving him to withdraw.

 The presentation of symptoms can change a lot with such a sudden and extreme environmental change. The reasons behind the changes can be hard to pin down and there is quite a bit of variety.

 I think the only thing I’d caution against is having a main established symptom vanish completely and replacing it with completely new, unestablished symptoms.

 Partly because I’ve never seen that described by a survivor, but also partly because I think it wouldn’t work in a story. Readers need to be able to see at least a little of where these symptoms come from and how they change. Otherwise it can seem like it’s come out of nowhere.

 Wrapping this up the ask reminded me a lot of Levi’s The Periodic Table. It’s a series of short stories covering incidents before, during and after his incarceration during the Holocaust. It’s been a long time since I read it and I’m not sure if it would be helpful to you. It might be though.

 Generally, it sounds like you’ve thought about this scenario and the character a lot. I’m confident that you’ll be able to establish the symptoms you pick and the ways those symptoms change.

 Writing this sort of long term recovery is a challenge, in part because there often isn’t a pre-defined end point. But it sounds like you are putting in the work and care a lot about how this story comes out.

 And that’s more then half the battle. :)

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[eldritchsurveys]

890.

5k Survey XVII

801. How often do you change your mood in a day? >> It depends. Sometimes I can actually stay pretty stable. Other times, more like a seesaw. Throw an emotional flashback or three into an otherwise-normal day and you’re in for a ride. 802. When you ask people how they are doing you actually care about their answer or is it just polite? >> If I, personally, ask how you’re doing, I literally am asking for the real answer. I rarely ever ask that, because that kind of “politeness” strikes me as particularly pointless and I generally don’t care how most people are doing anyway, so you know I mean it when I do ask. 803. Would you consider yourself to be very polite? >> No. I’m courteous in the sense that I say “please” and “thank you” to customer service people, and I hold doors for people directly behind me, and I say “excuse me” and shit like that. But I don’t make generic small talk, I don’t smile like a loon at randos (I’ll do a brief smile back if they smile first, but that’s the limit, and if I’m in a Mood it might end up looking more like a crazed grimace so be ready for that), and I’m not performative about looking “polite”. I’m just not interested. 804. Do you like movies and books that involve nuclear holocaust? >> Sure, I mean... the Fallout series of video games is one of my favourites, after all. 805. Have you ever had a lucid dream (a dream in which you knew you were dreaming and had complete control over what happened in the dream)? >> I’ve come close -- had the awareness but not necessarily full control.

806. Have you ever had a flying dream? >> Nope. 807. Have you ever had a lucid flying dream? >> Obviously not. 808. What’s the oddest law you ever heard of? >> I don’t remember. 809. What is the ultimate way to connect with another person? >> Good question. 810. Can you be intimate with someone without touching him or her? >> Of course. But different people prefer different intimacy styles. Maybe that kind of non-tactile intimacy wouldn’t feel the same for some people. 811. Can men and women ever really be ‘just friends’ with no interest in anything more? >> Shut up. 813. Are you addicted to this survey like drugs? >> No. It’s really just convenient at this point -- I don’t have to go through the whole process of finding a survey to take, because this one’s right here. If I happen to catch up to Elizabeth, I might have to wait a few days for her to post more sections, but other than that I’ve got my work cut out for me already. 814. If your significant other wanted to wait for marriage could you hold out or would you leave them (or would you cheat)? >> --- 815. What’s the longest sentence you can make using only words that start with the same letter as your first name? >> I don’t want to. 816. If you had a theme song what would it be? >> --- 817. Are you cranky? >> Not right now. 818. Which group generally annoys you more, people older than you, or people younger than you? >> There’s no rule with this. People can annoy me at any age. 819. Do you refer to older people as old farts? >> No. 820. Do you refer to younger people as the kids? >> Yeah. Nine times out of ten I’m not being condescending, I even call myself “kid” sometimes. 821. Which is better: Poems that everyone can relate to or poems that are intensely personal to the author? >> Both can exist. Sometimes the same poem can fit both criteria. An intensely personal experience can still be very relatable to a lot of people, and sometimes you find that out when you create art. 822. Is it worse to be too hot or too cold? >> I just don’t like being in extreme conditions of either kind. 823. Are you so flexible that you can put your feet behind your head? >> No. I’m very inflexible. 824. Would you enjoy reading fairy tales written about robots? >> Yes, very much. 825. Is smoking a turn on or gross? >> It’s neither. It’s just a thing people do. 826. What is the one way you wouldn’t want to die? >> Oh, you know. Most ways. 827. Which would look sillier on you: A cowboy hat or a Rasta hat? >> I don’t know. 828. Would you rather have a job doing something indoors or outdoors? >> Indoors. 829. Would you rather learn more about human nutrition or meteorology? >> Fuck, both of those subjects are interesting to me. 830. Have you ever taken honors courses? >> No. 831. What do you think of crop circles? >> They’re fuckin cool. 832. Where do they come from? >> I don’t know, and that’s part of what’s cool about them. 833. When was the last time you screwed up big time? >> I don’t remember. 834. You have a choice. What do you eat - A veggie burger, a turkey dog, or a cheese sandwich >> Veggie burger, absolutely. I eat those almost every day anyway. 835. Do you get a lot of random instant messages? >> No. 836. Do you have a paper journal also? >> No. 837. VHS or DVD? >> Streaming. (DVD if I must choose, but I really don’t care about owning physical copies of things, it just... doesn’t matter as much to me as I guess it matters to a lot of people. I tried to grok it and even adopt it as a practice but my brain just doesn’t work that way.) 838. Vinyl, cassette tape, or CD? >> Streaming. 839. Have you ever seen the video/heard the song Days Go By, performed by Dirty Vegas? >> I think so. It sounds familiar. 840. MTV: should it play more videos or more shows? >> At this point, I don’t even care anymore. The heyday has passed. Also, Catfish and Ridiculousness are fun shows, so fuck it. 841. Name a band: Dream Theater. Do fans of that band tend to share any characteristics with each other? >> I don’t know, I’m not going to stereotype progressive metal fans or anything, lol. I do have to admit that the first thing I thought of was the whole “girls don’t like Dream Theater thing” that Mike Portnoy said that one time, because when me and a girl I knew went to see them, we went for a bathroom break and the line for the women’s bathroom was literally nonexistent while the line for the men’s was a mile long. (That almost never happens anywhere else, lmao.) It was just funny at the time, I don’t actually think that’s a solid representation of listener demographics or anything. 842. What does the expression 'touch and go’ mean? It means being uncertain of a desired outcome. <-- I guess that’s what it means. 843. Caffeine or alcohol? >> Alcohol. I can sleep after drinking alcohol, and alcohol doesn’t make me anxious. Can’t say the same for caffeine. 844. Betty or Veronica? Archie or Reggie or Jughead? >> I was a preteen the last time I even held an Archie comic in my hands, I don’t remember anything about the characters. (And I don’t watch Riverdale either, lol.) 845. What book are you reading right now? >> Well, I was reading Wolves of the Calla but I haven’t picked it back up in at least a week. I’m struggling with wanting to continue this reread -- there’s some stuff I definitely want to reread (like the whole Castle Discordia bit and the part where Roland and Eddie go visit Stephen King), but I’m having a hard time remaining interested in the other shit. Also, I’m tired of Roland. I’m always tired of Roland, but, you know. 846. Is the news too depressing? >> Don’t ask me, I don’t watch that shit. 847. Would you rather have a stuffed lion, elephant, pig or duck? >> Lion! Oooh, I might get one, actually. To represent King Crimson. :B 848. Are you late for a very important date? >> No. 849. Ever use star 69? >> No. 850. Is everyone as smart as you? >> ---

[natsspammityspamspamham]

1. Who’s your celebrity crush?

I don’t have celebrity crushes most of the time. I have people who I think are pretty and people that I admire, but I don’t have any of them that I crush on. Alongside my favourite voice actors (seiyuu), Emma Watson would definitely be up there. There’s something about intelligence that makes a person far more appealing.

2. Are you single or taken?

As single as they come! I haven’t even been in a relationship, and I don’t really have any interests in getting into one!

3. Rant. Just do it.

I’m nervous. I’m doubting. I hate this feeling in me. I feel so out of place, so uncomfortable, and it’s eating me on the inside. I wish I had friends in real life. I really wish I did, but it feels like I’m growing apart from everyone, and I’m pushing them all away because I can’t stand being reminded of my past, and I feel like every step I take is just a desperate attempt to get myself back on track, and I’m trying to be proud of myself. I really am. But I have a hard time acknowledging anything that I do. I never feel like I’m enough. I feel insufficient. I feel like I’m just a statistic. I feel inferior yet superior at the same time. My self-image is warped. I feel like I’m lying to myself and to others. It hurts. It hurts a lot, and I don’t want people to know but I do at the same time. It’s a pain unlike any other, and as much as I can say that I don’t feel lonely, I feel like there should be people in my life that I can call my friends, and I want someone that I can mutually call my best friend without them saying that they are just my “good friend”. I want to know that I mean the upmost to a person without feeling I’m burdening them. I want to be No. 1 at something. 

I dream about chasing dreams like becoming a medical professional, but I continue to realize and face my shortcomings that would prove that I’m not really fit for it. I want to do it, but quite frankly, I’m too stupid. 

I can’t even articulate what’s truly paining my mind. It’s difficult. I don’t know why my body and mind wants to destroy itself.

But sometimes, I think I fix myself better.

4. Do you think it's okay to separate the artist from the art?

Personally, I’m one of those people who usually say no to this question. Now, if you have weird kinks or like pineapple on pizza, that’s none of my business. I won’t hold it against you. However, I find it hard to separate when things are illegal or morally wrong.

Examples:

Net-juu no Susume was a really heartwarming anime, and it was one of my favourite anime that depicted a wholesome adult romance that unveiled many truths about the real world despite spending its time online, but I would’ve never watched the anime if I would have known that the director was a Holocaust-denier. The rest of the staff? I don’t know, but I felt extremely uncomfortable even reblogging content after I found out.

I was planning on watching Rurouni Kenshin, and to this day, I believe I’m missing out, but I cannot support or condone or even watch a series that has a creator as wretched as Nobuhiro Watsuki. If you don’t know, he was charged in February of 2017 for child pornography. He was fined 200,000 yen. It was a slap on the wrist. Even though Rurouni Kenshin wasn’t a reflection on his person according to fans, I don’t feel keen on watching a show created by such a man.

In regards to actors, this goes for them too. If they are not supportive of the LGBTQ community, if they are racist, if they have committed acts that are cannot be condoned, I wouldn’t want to watch them or anything. Again, I have a hard time keeping track of who’s actually clean in this world, and in Japan, there is a lot of covering up. It was recently revealed that a lot of Madhouse anime that people love were probably made at the expense of animators who are human beings.

5. How many accounts do you have?

I have a few.

@nsisbest385 - my main where I stockpile my music @natsspammityspamspamham - This one where I am really open and reblog everything that I want to reblog (no exceptions; if I don’t even think about it, I just reblog) @natsthinkitythinkthinkthonk - used to be for inspirational stuff/writing, but now it’s mostly seiyuu stuff. I post things for their birthdays. I should’ve made a separate account. @semitranslatedseiyuublog - Where I semi-translate stuff but mostly transfer seiyuu content from Reddit. @awkwardbsd - This account has more followers than all my other accounts combined. It’s for awkward screenshots, memes, and other stuff surrounding the Bungou Stray Dogs universe. @dragontypepropaganda - I didn’t tell anyone this existed until now. I’m generally not on it. I just queue and leave.

6. How many pairs of shoes do you have?

Let’s see... uh... 1 for outside, 1 for exercise, 1 for my house slippers, 3 for orchestra that I never use, 2 dress shoes that I really never use, and I’m supposed to get 1 pair of slippers for outside.

7. Opinion on…

I don’t think I can answer this.

8. How many accounts do you follow?

9. Favourite brand of clothing?

I’ve been wearing more Uniqlo lately, but my wardrobe has a lot of hand-me-downs despite being so sensitive tactile-wise.

10. Name a dog

Atticus (boy) and Haruko (girl)

11. What unusual talent do you have?

I can whistle. I haven’t tried in a while, but I can put my feet behind my head.

12. What’s the most interesting school's gossip you’ve ever heard?

Keep in mind, I was only in school until grade 9-10. One of my PE teachers Ms. Snow had really scary eyes. When she got mad at me (which is pretty frequent considering she didn’t know who I was and kept calling me by other Asian people’s names because “we look the same”), I swear her eyeballs would extend from her sockets a little. They looked like they were about to pop out of her head. My sister said that urban legend states that she once fell down the stairs and both eyeballs popped out. She put them back in and carried on.

13. Ever prank called a store?

I think I almost tried once until I got a scolding or something (wasn’t even my parents).

14. What’s your coffee order?

Don’t have one. I don’t like coffee. I’m generally open to tea.

15. What’s a question do you constantly get asked?

“How are you?” I usually choose the easy route to answer to this question. I just say “good thanks”. You want the truth? I lie to myself.

“Why did you leave school?” It was a living hell. I didn’t feel safe. I was breaking down years ago. School nearly broke me, and if I stayed there any longer, I would’ve died (not an exaggeration).

“What are your hobbies?” I usually just say music and watching cartoons* (anime). They usually ask what else, and I just stare blankly.

16. If you had to get a tattoo right now, what would you get and where?

I wouldn’t want one.

17. Google the top song from the year you were born

Apparently, it’s How You Remind Me by *gasp* Nickelback.

18. Rant about your favourite musician

I seriously wish I was able to go to Sara Bareille’s version of the Waitress. I wish I was able to see it on Broadway. She’s such a talented individual, and she deserves all the attention she gets.

19. What’s your favorite teacher you’ve ever had?

All of my best teachers have been outside of school. I would say that my favourite teachers are my current bass teacher and my taekwondo master who has taught me for over a decade.

20. Describe your blog in 3-5 words

Fando(o)m, ranting, anime, seiyuu, random

21. What’s a conspiracy you believe in?

I believe aliens exist. I don’t think it would be logical to assume that Earth is the only planet that has “intelligent” (I say that very loosely) lifeforms.

“But they don’t have water or oxygen” Bold of you to assume that said aliens would need such a thing. I would think they can adapt like humans and all that. I just think it’s dumb to close ourselves off to believing that there are people other than ourselves that exist in this wide and expanding universe.

22. If you could see any concert tonight what would you choose?

I would really want to see the Waitress. If that doesn’t count, I would want to see some seiyuu singing live. It would depend. Hosoya doesn’t sing much anymore, Maaya Sakamoto has a waitlist longer than my lifespan (I have no luck with lotteries), and Saori Hayami has the same issue. I would want to see Sphere live too, but I don’t know all of their songs.

23. If you could break one of your bad habits which would you choose?

My depression... or my anxiety. Actually, those aren’t habits. I guess the closest I will get is doubting myself and beating myself up.

24. Can you dance? Sing?

A strong no to both.

25. What’s something you can’t stop buying?

Uh… I don’t go out and buy anything. I don’t make money so I don’t buy. However, if I did, I would really want to treat myself to good food and anime stuff.

26. Crowds or small groups?

Small groups... obviously.

27. How long before a trip do you pack?

Depends on where. When it comes to the Philippines, weeks for the Balikbayan boxes and less than a week for my actual clothes (usually pack a ton of clothes because I sweat a lot and “we’re not doing laundry!”)

28. What celebrity would you rate a PERFECT 10?

I feel like I don’t have a good grasp of the culture so I actually can’t say anything about my favourite seiyuu. We don’t even know if that’s their true personality. However, I feel like my perfect 10s are Emma Watson and Robin Williams. They might not be my “crushes”, but they are perfect 10s. 

29. What quote or inspirational setting do you think is bs?

“When you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up!” Nah man, you just don’t know what rock bottom looks like. It’s gonna get worse.

“Don’t fix what isn’t broken!” All because you can’t see what’s wrong with it doesn’t mean it isn’t broken. Yeah, I’m talking about the school system.

“Pain makes you who you are. It makes you stronger.” I can say that my trauma gives me anxiety.

30. If you had to dye your hair an unnatural colour right now, what would you choose?

I go by “Purple Dino” online so I’d have to say dark purple.

31. You can change one thing about your life right now. what are you changing?

I wish I could breathe properly. My allergies make it so hard for me to exist. It affects my breathing, sleep, dental care, and so much more. I think that’s the one physical thing I would change.

32. How old do you get mistaken for?

Apparently, I look like I’m in middle school even though I’m almost a legal adult.

33. What do you think about a lot?

Anime, seiyuu, my own shortcomings. 

34. Do you like your Hogwarts house or do you wish you were a different one?

I like Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff. I haven’t done my test in a while. 

35. What does home mean to you?

Home is where you live. It’s where the heart lives. It’s where you feel safe, and it’s where you can take off the mask that you live in during the day. It’s the place where I don’t have to lie through my teeth. I can cry, I can laugh, I can scream, and I can finally be me.

36. What do you think you’d be arrested for?

I feel like I would be caught for pirating anime even if I don’t profit off it. 

37. Have you ever been called down to the principal's office?

I’ve been there, but I haven’t been called down there because I really wasn’t important in school.

38. Post a picture of the outfit you would choose if you could have any outfit you wanted

Probably a dark coloured hoodie with sweatpants. That’s my default during the winter anyway.

39. Describe your aesthetic

Tired dead eyes with existential dread and depression. That’s how I see myself.

40. Answer with one of your ‘school memes’ (inside jokes you have with your class/grade) with no explanation 

I’m not sure how to say this, but I was really not in the “right crowd” at school, and I was never let into any of these things. I can’t answer this, and it pains me just to read this because I’m missing out on so much of my youth and “high school life”. 

I’m tagging @caratheillustrious who reblogged the questions!

[ninja8tyu]

My therapist told me once that a lot of people see therapists, but it doesn’t seem like that because it’s not like people tell others about it.

Now that I’m writing this, I question why snapshoting your lunch is more interesting than therapy, but I digress.

I’m going to tell you about what it’s like to go see therapists. It isn’t as bad as others make it out to be, and it means nothing bad to go see one; only that you are taking care of your mental health. Push away people who say that you’re demented.

I went through multiple therapists through childhood. I was never told why, but I can deduce it.

If it wasn’t the autistic breakdowns and anger issues, along with constant bullying and disproportionate retaliation (I still think it’s fair), I have no clue.

But before I do go on wholesome journey, I’m going to give an example in my life where a therapist (if that was a therapist; my memory only recalls an interview-like room, but it’s indeterminate if it was a therapist or not, as it seemed to be more of a questioning and interrogation rather than the therapy I know of, but i suppose it still applies, as people around my age at the time, I feel, would feel uncomfy talking to adults (I’m more comfy talking to adults than kids my age, just to note, according to other people and personal affirmation) and a therapist may seem intimidating because of the age gap or size difference) basically contributed to my anxiety and distrust in everyone.

Not to bring hate to that therapist, but at the same time, go back to the kitchen bitch, but how this therapist destroyed my trust is basically because I made a terrible joke. Being autistic didn’t grant me the normal ability to determine what was okay to say in certain situations the moment I was born, and I had to learn it throughout life. I think I was frustrated with my mom over my computer (which now I realize how deep my addiction to the web goes) and joked about an elaborate plan that would hurt my mom if she took it away.

Now, this joke was a joke because it was impossible to pull at my age. Putting myself in her shoes, I wonder what she would be thinking. Did she take the joke too seriously? Did she actually consider a 7 year old a threat to human life? Fuck if I know, but my mom was contacted, and boy, did I stop trusting them then.

In defense of her, that was still a threat, and therefore better safe than sorry. In attack towards her, your idiocy fucked me up enough to not make proper use of mental health professionals. The defense is weak in that my threat was empty and fangless. Weighing the options, I think that the dumbest option was chosen (which is why I doubt her status as a therapist: she’s clinically retarded).

So because of that incident, I didn’t really had a fun time with therapists after a very long time, up until high school.

From what my therapist said, it seems like people like me make the mistake that seeing a therapist and/or taking medication is a magical cure to depression and all our personality problems. I can attest to that.

They do not engage in mind-control or the mystical arts. They are more like conversation partners than anything else.

The mistake we make is thinking that something else will solve our problem, but the truth is that the change we want has to come from us. The therapists and medicine helps to aid it, not make it come to be.

I didn’t think that medicine or therapy would help me though, as before high school, I believed that I was right the entire time, and the world was fucked up.

Well, the world is still fucked up, sharing some of the reasons why I believed why that is plus more, but not all of it that ended up to be delusions.

I spent my time telling the therapists how I’m right, and explaining my reasoning. Lucky that I didn’t pass them off as mind-controlled too, and tried to debate rather than go flat-earther over global morality. I guess I assumed that I was powerful enough to wipe mind control or I could appeal to their reason and emotion to destroy the control, assuming it was there. Fuck if I know. I wanna know what that little brat that was once me was thinking as well. But I digress.

The therapists I saw, the visits don’t really stick into my head, but I recall them always suggesting new possibilities in my head. Rather than linear thinking, they suggested other thoughts that might have occurred with others. Now that I’m typing this, I feel that something I might have done back then in response was “well, it’s a stupid way of thinking, and they should go die” which would explain why I didn’t just become a better person then. It’s because I was more smarter back then than now. I overthink and try to live in theory, rather than see and know what is in front of me, and living in the world I know I’m in. After all, I can’t apply “everyone has good will” when I’m living in “everyone is out to get you, literally, just check your memories and the fact that they’re still doing it”. But I digress.

Eventually, therapy stopped. If I ever went to see a therapist, it was because I was in trouble. Saw my counselor too, who basically acted like one.

Anxiety and depression basically were gangbanging me during the time, and I was controlled by constant fear and wanting to kill everyone the first chance I got where no one would be left surviving. Never happened for obvious reasons. Also, the US didn’t give me nuclear codes. Nor did ISIS give me an AK. No one trusts me with a weapon, which is oddly funny and annoying. But I digress.

My mental state went to shit. I remember reading in a report where it included a history of my past “misconduct”, one event that I found funny was the fact that they recorded a threat I made. It included ripping someone’s mouth off and shoving it in their ear so they could hear what they were saying. I hold my child self in high regard for this reason, but at the same time, I also want to shoot him for doing stupid shit that I wouldn’t do in clarity. He’s still a legend in my eyes, but I digress.

My counselor wasn’t a therapist, but damn did she pull me out of a portion of my depression. She played a major part for putting trust in other people. Depression and anxiety took over, I didn’t want to hold it in anymore, and so I told her that she thought I was a nuisance, that she should just stop pretending to be nice, and just toss me aside. She said that she did care for me, though in an angry voice. She was mad that I put words in her mouth. But her words told me that people weren’t all out to get me, and that I’m not hated behind everyone’s backs. I didn’t think and still do think that people can’t lie when they are angry like that.

Then high school came. I had just about it with depression, and I asked to go see a therapist for antidepressants. I didn’t really trust therapists that much still, but somehow, that step made me effectively use the help I got. But yeah.

My therapist noted how the first time I met her, I was like “I’m just here for my magic drugs. Nothing else.” Funny, looking back at it. The therapy helped more than the antidepressants.

I managed to convince my “drugs are brainwash” parents (who are stupid and easily manipulative (often exploited by my brother to make me feel worse), which, even if they disagreed, an annoying child begging for it will always win against such parents, and while it never got to that point, I got the help) to let me get antidepressants (due to cheap price, studying effects of it, also my therapist helped) to help me get better.

I asked someone on tumblr as an anon who I knew was taking antidepressants, and the key thing I took was that the drug is not going to instantly cure me. It isn’t an instant happy pill. It’s a clutch that helps you move through life. Some people even life with depression, never really getting rid of it completely, but they learn to live with it regardless.

My experience with taking antidepressants were introductory, or for mild depression (just to note, I have dysthymia). It made me less dead on the inside. Didn’t make me happy, but I noticed a lack of apathy. 

I don’t think the drugs worked because of my more severe depression, and the more obvious reason: my family was making me miserable and suicidal.

You can’t get over depression when people are continuing to put you down. I’m finding a fond interest in murder and torture because of them. I want to get over it, but if I have a toxic family who counteracts any help I get to my mental state, then what’s the result going to be? Hint: I don’t get better.

Family therapy is out of the question, and getting professional help for the biggest fucker contributing to it (brother) is too, since “mind-control” and “government conspiracy” and “I’m crazy, literally, being autistic and all”. So yeah. 17 years wasted wallowing in depression because of a shitty state in a shitty country and shitty family. If I haven’t expressed my rage for my family and those who have made me miserable enough, just take it as true that if I have the ability to, I would enact something that would put a number of people countable on two hands through the type of hell that rivals the holocaust and gulags with their tens of millions of people who suffered in terms of inhumanity and immorality. I digress.

And then I cut myself for the first time. Thanks to my big brother. My mental state was no longer stable, and also the start of when I get kicked out of two discord groups consecutively.

I was still too scared to tell my therapist more about my life out of fear that I’d be sent to a mental hospital, so I went onto the internet, where I could vent about my problems and express my rage anonymously and safely (ignoring hackers and the like).

During this time, I learned a lot of things that really hit me and hurt damn badly, and I couldn’t really blame half of them because it was quite literally caused by me. Venting around on the web didn’t turn out so good.

I’m worth no more than shit to someone I know to be intelligent, whom I had assumed before then that only geniuses could understand the pain I went through. The person here also went through rough shit, possibly worse than I ever had. I had no excuse nor explanation to myself why this is other than that it is what it is, and what is, is that I’m worth below that of manure.

Then I joined a community full of degenerates. The thing that hits me lightly is that I got rejected by a bunch of misfits in society, who are literal nazis, hypocrites, criminals, rejects, et cetera. I want a majority of the people in there dead. I learned a few things like that the people with power are the people you must obey, or you will suffer. I learned that corruption isn’t given a damn about. Systems will gladly run on immorality, so long as it isn’t moral yet. I earn that people are actually willing to us any amount of effort to put up facades to be nice while they absolutely despise you behind their backs.

Alternate accounts let me find some of things people have said while I was banned. I hated it.

I’m pretty sure some of my fits of rage online are on some cringe comp, but I digress.

And then my weekly visit with my therapist came around. My mental state becoming worse and worse, starting with my brother who actively makes me miserable, to being banned from places I felt belonging to because of my mental instability, I had no fear of going to a mental hospital.

Better there than with a shitty family that makes me miserable. I couldn’t care less what drugs they inject into me, so long as it helps me.

I walked in, telling her that I no longer fear going to a mental hospital. I’m going to be honest. There is nothing good left to lose. Just the bad is left to lose, and I’m begging on the inside to lose them.

And then I cried. Told her about how I felt worthless, powerless, useless, a waste, how miserable my life felt, and so on and so on.

I expressed my rage, and how I hated them. I wanted them dead. I never deserved this. What did I do to deserve this? Why give birth to me to make me go through hell? I never asked to be born, and yet people are treating me as if I decided to be born in hell.

Yeah, death threats I made. I’m lucky my therapist didn’t just call the FBI and sick ‘em on me. She was understanding, and knew I was going through a bad time. Not everyone gets the same treatment, I understand, but I have a point here.

The thing I feel about letting it all out, is that because I let it all-out, I’m open to judgement, and therefore correction. My therapist talked with me, I put out my thoughts, she did hers, and the problems begin to become solved. Though, having an interest in psychology and sharing basic knowledge of it helped exponentially. Also, working on emotional intelligence helped too.

I feel that most people don’t really talk about their problems, and they never resolve themselves. They may hold some kind of opinion or thought that would be really bad to have if a situation popped up where they applied that. And when it pops up, they then make a bad decision. But of course, they can’t talk to anyone about them out of fear of judgement.

I feel that therapy works best when you’re honest and unafraid of judgement. You have to be willing to put out your thoughts and let them be vulnerable, and accept when you’re wrong. Also, mental hospitals aren’t that bad, apparently. They do inject strong drugs for people with certain conditions, but that’s because they’re fit to deal with side-effects better than at home or in a standard check-up hospital. Other people’s words, not mine. I haven’t been to one yet.

For me, my problem was to come to terms with the world I believe to be corrupted, and personal problems. I asked why are there killer cops? Why on Earth is the school system built where it rewards bullies but punishes victims? What is the universal cause that turns people bad? Am I the bad guy?

My solution was to let my thoughts be open to be judged and criticized. And it worked for me.

I think I should say that it may not work for you if you go see a therapist. It may not be the best person that would help you, or that you still need time to mentally prep yourself.

As for me, I’m probably not going to see my therapist any more. I’m scare that she’s putting up a kind facade, but actually hates me. I don’t want to be a bratty nuisance that still couldn’t get better after two years and coming back to old issues. I just fear that being true.

My mental state is beginning to deteriorate as a result of being stuck at home with a mentally and emotionally abusive family over the summer. I had starved myself for a short duration (~16 hrs) before realizing that was stupid, and I was basically suggesting to kill my body in an attempt to prove a point (a human can last months without food, but it wouldn’t be worth losing brain development time, especially my life, since I know they wouldn’t be more nicer even if I starved myself).

Also, still no psychiatrist visit for some fucking reason. Medicine can help, but with a family that thinks drugs are products of the devil, it’s more likely for me to go on a psychosis than them ever consider that drugs aren’t that bad. Also, fuck the US for putting a bad name on drugs and the drug war. Literally, not even medical drugs like antidepressants that can help people get better are safe from the toxic culture it bred. Also fuck DARE. You increased drug addiction. Go fuck yourselves. Also fuck the cops for being biased against the mentally ill and the “special” ones. Fuck the system for the same reason. Fuck the world for still thinking they’re morally upright when they still do immoral acts. Fuck the people who let it happen for any reason. Fuck this snowflake society that can’t do anything but complain, because a revolt would be too much work for their fragile asses. Fuck the political system and the government for working based on who pays the most, seldom morality and justice. Fuck my family for being stupid and abusive. Fuck society and how they think that if it isn’t the worst that it could be, then you have no right to complain and correct your problems. Fuck political correctness and how it prioritizes being unoffensive over actually solving problems. Fuck the UN for being incompetent.

[pince-nezpony]

Random Fandom Vent 14

The more I think about it...the more revealing Adam had that brand really upsets me. 

Adam has been, from the moment we’ve seen him, portrayed as an utterly reprehensible, evil, individual. Even putting aside his callous and mean-spirited intentions he’s shown, even as a person, to harbour no positive feelings for anyone in his entire life, making it unclear even what he’s fighting for since he doesn’t seem to even like any of the Faunus. 

But...but...making it that he’s the only Faunus who has EVER suffered any serious physical harm we know of? It sends a REALLY unfortunate implication. Beyond the already unfortunate implication we’re getting that ‘racism’ against the Faunus doesn’t really exist it’s just in the White Fang’s head, we now have a situation where the only Faunus character we’ve ever seen to suffer actual signifcant harm from that prejudice...is a 100% immoral monster with no redeeming or justifiable features. 

It doesn’t help that as a Bull Faunus it carries the really disturbing notion of ‘branding your steer’ but rather than sympathetic, because its Adam, its just more evidence for why he DESERVES to be treated so. It makes Schnee Dust Corporation not even look so bad since they can rightfully point out that only one they ever branded, as far as we know, is a lunatic terrorist and their only crime is not killing him but only injuring him. 

This is deeply disturbing. It’s akin to if you have a story about an oppressed minority and then the only character who ever actually shows significant evidence of being oppressed is also a genocidal maniac shown to be far more evil than anyone else. It is like having a Magneto as a pure evil villain with no nuances reveal he was barcoded during the Holocaust and then making it that the Nazis we meet are never evil but making it that every single victim who suffered under them who believes in militant response is evil.

It is so unsettling to see the sole Faunus who has any physical evidence of discrimination be completely deserving of it since he’s never, that we’ve seen, been anything but evil. It really troubles me that it has implications of slavery too, ownership, company symbol, and yet rather than the idea that the Faunus might be victims of slavery being something through which the Schnee Dust Corporation become major antagonists...the Antagonist is the sole branded Faunus we’ve ever seen. So...guess Schnee Dust Corporation was right?

What’s worse is we can contrast this with Cordovin. Cordovin is, other than a brief bit by Cardin, almost the only character we have EVER SEEN in RWBY evidence any discrimination, even lightly, against the Faunus. Yet in the battle with her we have Ruby appealing to her to cooperate with them and, I have no doubt, will most likely aid the Protagonists against the Leviathen in the coming story. We have a situation where racist humans are presented, at worse, as being flawed but not evil, whilst the only Faunus who explicitly says things like ‘humans discriminate against Faunus, we should stop them,’ is a inhuman monster with 0 redeeming features. We’re deep into the story, the Faunus racism allegory arc largely ended in Mistral, but we’ve not once had discriminating humans as antagonists of import whilst discriminating Faunus have been portrayed as possibly the most evil people in the world. 

I really just wish there’d been no brand. RWBY has already largely gone with the angle that Faunus who think there’s serious discrimination are wrong and should just shut up so putting that brand there, evidence of serious discrimination now just complicats the narrative in really unsettling ways; it either a) means the narrative is saying that the only discrimination suffered is justifiable since its suffered by people we know to be evil or b) it’s triviliazing the entire idea of systematic discrimination and slavery.

They should have kept Adam just as he’s been so far; a maniac who uses a blatantly untrue cause as a pretext to vent his psychotic desire to kill people. Putting that brand there...ugh, I just wish RWBY would stop trying to do a racism allegory with the Faunus. It just is leading to really, really terrible places. 

[momestuck]

Epilogues: Candy, Ch 22-26 [Epilogue 5]

/So a lot of heavy shit has happened, though worse is yet to come (I’ve been warned of an onscreen sexual assault in chapter 32).

Everyone’s been having babies and funerals! It’s a busy time.

(note: csa mention in chapter 23, though it does not occur in the narrative)

Chapter 22

This is another John-Terezi text convo chapter. There’s been a three-year timeskip. And... it’s raining ghosts now.

So I guess that’s what became of the whole ghosts in the Furthest Ring thing?

We also learn that, on top of the breeding restrictions, trolls are banned from rising beyond certain levels in government. Jane is, we learn, pretty much running the government behind the scenes, because what makes fascist movements tick is one evil person, obviously.

Karkat’s the one with a backbone at least...

JOHN: and karkat...

JOHN: he’s gone completely off the grid!

JOHN: at first we all assumed that the reason he ran away was because he got fed up with his shitty poly relationship.

JOHN: which was probably part of it, honestly. but now i keep seeing his face on all the resistance posters!

JOHN: i think they may have actually put him in charge?

TEREZI: H3H

TEREZI: 1 4LW4YS KN3W H3 H4D 1T 1N H1M

This situation is only exacerbated by the ghosts. So that means characters who were very definitely dead in the main storyline can show up.

Gamzee has been apparently spreading this religion of ‘redemption arcs’ by ‘making out with people’, and doing some kind of milk-based ‘baptism’. John, meanwhile, asks about the ethics of kidnapping baby Tavros from his horrific parents...

We get to bare witness to Gamzee ‘redeeming’ the ghosts of Feferi and Eridan. Which involves Eridan going on about Feferi’s feet and Gamzee mashing their faces together to make them ‘kiss and make up’.

Jane, it seems, is going full Condesce in more ways than one:

Just then, a dark shadow passes over the park. The crowd falls silent as they raise their heads to watch a drone ship pass by overhead. Its design is insect-like, splitting into many jagged branches, each decked out with weapons and cameras. It’s completely silent, and encased in armor with a bright red finish, smooth and seamless. It’s often cited by Jane as the crown jewel of Crockercorp’s various military contracts with the government.

...including literally building her spaceships, and sending them out over the Troll kingdom.

So we’re basically going to have the Holocaust allegory in here I guess? Fucking hell.

chapter 23

We get more words towards Roxy’s steady character dissolution...

It’s not like Roxy had ever been argumentative, exactly. He just seems to remember someone from his youth who was somewhat more contrarian in spirit than this person he’s married to now.

Back when they were dating, John thought she was acting a little off. Not quite in a bad way, but perhaps a little too “in love,” too fast. At least she still seemed like herself most of the time. But since the wedding, every year that goes by, she seems to become just a little more conciliatory. Not just toward him but toward life in general. She indulges Harry Anderson liberally and almost thoughtlessly. She doesn’t care that her best friend is slowly turning into an executive overseeing the corporate arm up the puppet ass of a ruthless dictatorship. She still thinks Gamzee is being sincere about all this “redemption” bullshit, even though he’s been casting an increasingly dark and hungry shadow behind Jane: a malicious royal vizier to her burgeoning imperial persona.

So John’s going to do something, and hopes that it will make things feel ‘real’ again... which is to say obviously what he talked about with Terezi, kidnapping/rescuing Tavros Crocker. Well-intentioned, but... I do not anticipate this going well.

We learn a little such as... Jane’s planning to outlaw human and troll marriage, which would retroactively hit Rose and Kanaya. Which I guess is the final straw for them. (Frankly it should be well past the final straw for all of them. They should all be with Karkat by this point!)

Also Jane and Jake are in ‘auspistice counselling’. We witness a loud row, in front of Tavros...

TAVROS: It’s fine,,, my parents are kismeses after all,,,

like, fuck.......

It’s a birthday party for Harry Anderson (John and Roxy’s kid), and Jane’s gift is, well, a fucking imperial drone!

sometimes I picture V’s gleeful face as we see the next thing she’s got for us... and now you lick the clown’s armpit... jane’s making the Holocaust but for fictional space aliens...

John awkwardly finds an excuse to be alone with Tavros, to convince him to run away. The kid dialogue is convincingly naive.

The possibility of child sexual abuse (by Gamzee) is raised, but it’s made clear this isn’t the case: what ever else Gamzee is in this version, he doesn’t rape children. However, that the situation is overall abusive in just about every other way is more than clear. Tavros, on his part, seems to be very keen to leave once he’s convinced John can escape Jane’s security.

I have a feeling the imperial drone may become relevant again shortly.

Jade, however, witnesses what John’s trying to do. She insists it will just make everything worse... (also Jake has an ‘execution dance off show’ because yeah...)

Whatever weird character corrosion has hit them is finally raised...

JOHN: if there was another way we would have found it by now!!!

JOHN: but there isn’t one, because everyone’s been all... brainwashed by marriage, or whatever the hell happened over the last few years that made things be this way!

JOHN: it’s like everyone just talks past each other all the time!

JADE: john...

JOHN: i’m the only one who ever seems to realize that something...

JOHN: that something’s WRONG!

Tavros sadly can’t get a word in edgewise as they start having a go at each other - John calling out everything that’s wrong, the way Jade forced a relationship on Dave and Karkat, and... and the noise is loud enough that Jane arrives on the scene.

John finally has a go at her with all the latent awfulness that’s been building up to this point. The fascism, the way she’s treated Jake, the Gamzee thing... the narration has put us very much on his side, centred his perspective, but his friends won’t hear it. And his windy powers destroy the room. So that’s something.

John runs away.

Comment: the mostly strict John viewpoint makes me wonder if there’s any degree of unreliable narration. All the same, most of the stuff is pretty undeniable.

chapter 24

This one begins with an interesting exchange:

JADE [alt-Calliope]: the timelines are interacting again.

ARADIA: ooh do you hear anything interesting

SOLLUX: don’t be s0 n0sy aradia.

To me the implication is that a lot of the ‘arrivals’ in this timeline - alt-Calliope in Jade’s body, the ghosts - are as a result of things that might be happening in the Meat story.

Through alt-Calliope’s eyes, we see Terezi and John’s conversation. Terezi is lost, in more ways than one, in the dreaming void searching for Vriska. She’s also experiencing derealisation... John, apparently in a mood for dropping harsh challenges, tells her point blank that Vriska is either dead, or, not worth her time for leaving her in doubt for so long.

alt-Calliope explains that what is at stake is not the destruction of this universe - but those of them here are ‘the lucky ones’, who live ‘beyond the reach of the prince’. She doesn’t bother to explain what is at stake.

Meanwhile, John and Terezi talk depression. There’s some really vital Terezi dialogue here...

JOHN: please. please come home.

TEREZI: TH3N WH4T

JOHN: umm, i dunno.

JOHN: we hang out and stuff?

TEREZI: JOHN YOU ST1LL DONT G3T 1T

TEREZI: 34RTH C 1S *NOT* MY HOM3

JOHN: do you really miss alternia that bad?

TEREZI: 1 D1D FOR 4 LONG T1M3

TEREZI: MOR3 TH4N K4RK4T 4ND K4N4Y4 D1D 4T L34ST

TEREZI: BUT 1 H4V3 NO 1D34 4NYMOR3

TEREZI: 4LT3RN14, VR1SK4, SGRUB

TEREZI: 1M SO CONFUS3D 4BOUT WH4T 1 W4NT

TEREZI: UGH, 1 THOUGHT TH4T NOT K1LL1NG H3R WOULD M4K3 M3 F33L B3TT3R

TEREZI: BUT 1NST34D 1TS L1K3 1 R3TCONN3D 4 HUG3 CHUNK OUT OF MY SOUL

TEREZI: 1 3R4S3D 4N 4CT1ON OF R3GR3T 4ND GR13F...  

TEREZI: 4ND JUST TURN3D 1T 1NTO SOM3TH1NG 1 C4NT STOP CH4S1NG 4FT3R

TEREZI: M4YB3 WH4T 1 D1D W4S N3CESS4RY TO S4V3 3V3RYON3 3LS3

TEREZI: BUT 1T SUR3 D1DNT S4VE M3

oh terezi....

terezi is giving up. she tells john she texted, echoing his words, to ‘give him the courtesy of closure’. and that she’s going to let herself die, alone in the Furthest Ring.

this is the ‘sweet fluffy’ branch huh

chapter 25

finally an update on what’s going on with Karkat!

he’s been somehow appointed ‘Commander’ of the rebellion, with good old Swifer Eggmop as one of his comrades! I’m so glad Swifer is having a role. Karkat is not all that pleased about the successes of his rebellion:

KARKAT: SO FAR ALL THIS “TROLL REBELLION” HAS AMOUNTED TO IS A WHOLE LOT OF DICK ALL, WITH AN ADDITIONAL SIDE SERVING OF JACK SQUAT, FOLLOWED UP BY A FINAL COURSE OF GETTING TO WATCH OUR TOP ANALYST, CLIPER BORDEN, BEING FORCED TO DANCE TO AVOID LIFE IMPRISONMENT IN A LABOR CAMP ON LIVE TELEVISION AND MAKING A COMPLETE ASS OF HIMSELF.

It’s all a weird mix of surreal and grimdark, much like the Alpha kids’ backstory in Homestuck proper. There’s hard labour camps... making cake; a ‘pastry-based shadow dictatorship’.

Rose and Kanaya are at least involved somewhat in the troll rebellion, and transport of the Mother Grub has been arranged.

Anyway, Karkat’s typically grumpy internal monologue is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Meenah from another dimension. A living Meenah - equipped with a Ring of Life. John asks if she got it from Calliope, but Meenah insists she did not. (Possibly she got it from Andrew Hussie himself? I’d have to watch Cascade again probably...)

Meenah, it seems, is fresh from battling Lord English - apparently without success. But her massive army of ghosts arrives with her... and she’s willing for Karkat to take charge and order her around, as long as he does it with a suitably commanderly demeanour. Does this mean the rebellion now stands more of a chance? Meenah is ruthless (she was the Condesce in another life), though capricious... Karkat is honest and direct and angry about the right things, but rather prone to getting lost in it.

Also he still won’t text Dave, and won’t let Rose talk to him about it.

chapter 26

Back to John, who’s thinking about messaging Terezi again - presumably in the hope that she is not, in fact, dead?

He’s getting a good old mope on about the seeming fakeness, non-’canonicity’ of life on Earth C. But after some ‘melodramatic contemplating’ in this vein, he’s interrupted by his dad’s car.

I’m going to be very curious if the Meat route explains how all this stuff got into the Earth C universe.

Unfortunately, what John finds in the car is... not his dad, but a bit of Terezi’s blood. From which he concludes... he’s never going to see her again, there was never even a possibility of it.

Feeling derealisation more than ever, John just screams a lot.

Damn lol, this story is making me care about John Egbert of all people!

epilogue 5

This is the episode where the whole idyll comes crashing down. Things aren’t ok, things weren’t going to be ok, trying to pretend things were ok just made everyone miserable.

I am sufficiently depressed that that rather appeals as a narrative - much more than a ‘happily ever after’ ending. But it’s not over yet.

Hopefully there’s yet hope for the characters I like to find some manner of escape from this latest hell, develop out of the worst selves they’ve built... Roxy, at least, I hope can change, stop being this non-person...

[otnesse]

Analysis on MGS4's ending

Hi. As I alluded to in earlier posts, I mentioned that MGS4's ending really wasn't particularly good or well-written. I've said a few times that sad endings are really overrated regarding realism. Well, I can tell you that MGS4's ending alongside The Matrix Revolution's ending, was so unrealistic that even Disney-style happy endings are a LOT more realistic than them. Might as well cover exactly what the problems with the ending were.

1. Liquid Ocelot's plan and rate of success

The first part of the problem deals largely with the reveal of Liquid Ocelot's true plan, after manipulating Snake into carrying it out for him. See, after Snake shuts down GW (and, inadvertently, the whole AI network), Liquid Ocelot reveals when Snake asked why he didn't stop him that shutting down the AI network was in fact what he planned all along (he had earlier led everyone to believe that he sought to just usurp command via GW, how that would work I don't know since it's technically locked out of the system, so even IF Liquid did indeed try to shoot out JD, he'd still have to contend with AL, TJ, and TR before he can come close to taking over the network). Then he basically gives the history lecture about the Patriots and Outer Heaven's little war between each other before basically gloating about how the world is now "Free from FOXDIE... Free from the System... Free from ID control. Our minds free from their prisons. That is the haven [Liquid Ocelot had] yearned for", and then after a fight basically infers that now with the AIs gone, people will just shoot each other for fun like in the Wild West with full-on anarchy, the complete absence of law and order. Otacon after Liquid Ocelot's death then basically reveals that such didn't come to pass because Sunny "kept the brain stem intact" when writing the code for FOXALIVE, and gives a list of all the elements of society that were preserved to prevent a holocaust that Liquid Ocelot envisioned to free the world from The Patriots.

Here's the problem, though: The stuff Otacon listed as being the vitals of society either wouldn't have been controlled into existence by the Patriots at all (or, heck, even their predecessor organization the Philosophers), or even if they did actually control them, their dismantling would have at worst been a minor inconvenience and not an apocalyptic scenario like the rest of the cast indicated. Here's the list as described by Otacon in the ending:

Otacon: She [Sunny] analyzed Naomi's black box and separated the Patriots' control system from the vital lifelines of society. Water... Air... Electricity... Food... Medicine, communication, transportation...

Let me start by covering each of them and how they would not have even remotely in danger of dying out thanks to the Patriots going away:

A. Water

Water has existed since well before even the Philosophers were founded, let alone the Patriots, so it shouldn't even need to be stated that the Patriots' destruction wouldn't impact water at all (and that's not even getting into rain-clouds). Even if we are to take that to mean water purification for drinking, that's existed since the late 18th century, not to mention made accessible to the public in a practical manner since 1910. There's definitely no way the Patriots would have negatively impacted water unless the Earth was so polluted that water itself was poison, that and maybe a weather-altering device (I guess that might explain why MGSV oddly had Diamond Dogs possessing weather altering technology). On that note, that also would prove to be a problem for citing electricity, which I'll get to in a moment.

B. Air

Like with water, air itself has existed since long before even the Philosophers, let alone the Patriots, were created, as breathable oxygen and also the weather, so their destruction would not have negatively impacted it. I'd expect something like that from Mega Man Zero, where that at least had Harupia being capable of altering the weather as well as his weather station. Probably the only way that would fly is if the Earth had inhospitable weather beforehand (think Fichina before the weather control center was installed in Star Fox Assult).

C. Electricity

One of the first methods of getting electricity involved water mills, and that's not even getting into the Incadescent Lamp (aka, the Light Bulb) that Thomas Edison invented, all of which pre-dated even the Philosophers, let alone the Patriots. And let's not get into Ben Franklin's invention of the electric rod. It's pretty obvious that the Patriots destruction would not destroy that from modern society. And even IF that was meant to imply the Patriots were only able to generate electricity a'la Dr. Weil's having control over all the energy, that only would act as a minor inconvenience, not an apocalyptic scenario. I live in the Branches of Dunwoody, which is rather infamous for being the last place to have restored power in the event of a blackout. No one ends up deciding to just loot and pillage their neighbors via mob rule whenever there was a blackout that occurs. Probably the only time something like that occurred might have been the 1977 blackout, and even THAT had other factors that were being ignored such as the mayor just letting everyone cut loose and not even bothering with enforcing the law.

D. Food

You're kidding right? Food has practically EXISTED since life first existed, which was well before the Patriots or, heck, even the Philosophers were formed. Food was hunted and even grown since time immemoriam, and there were even things known as harvests. The Patriots being destroyed obviously wouldn't hamper food. Not to mention the Food & Drug Administration was formed in 1906, well before the Philosophers were formed, so even doing preventative measures on bad food would not have been severely impacted. At worst, they might do slightly outdated aspects. Even in Weimar Germany during the 1930s, that was more the cause of a loss of money thanks to the Great Depression than an actual lack of food, not to mention in the USSR, that was due to the higher ups adhering to "to each according to his needs, to each according to his will" in a very self-serving manner despite the PR.

E. Medicine

Sure, several cures to diseases that were discovered between, say, 1921 up to 2014 probably would have been hampered if the Patriots were destroyed, but any cures to diseases made prior to that time would have very minimal effect, if any, by the Patriots shutdown. And even there, it would be a minor inconvenience at most, as humanity has managed to survive without modern medicines in the past, and find a way around it.

F. Communication

Probably the only thing I can think of that MIGHT actually be shut down are wireless phones and the internet, which were made by, if not the Patriots, then at a bare minimum the Philosophers. And even THAT would overall be a minor inconvenience at worst. Humanity has communicated by talking face to face, not to mention writing letters, and even the telephone was created during the 19th century by Alexander Graham Bell, so that wouldn't have been impacted much (in fact, I and my family often use dialup as an emergency for a power outage if it knocks out Cell phone usage). So no, communication would not be harmed by the Patriots fall, certainly not to the degree of it being an apocalyptic scenario in any case. Also, combining this with transportation, one of the earliest mail carrier delivery services was the Pony Express, back in the 19th century.

G. Transportation

Other than maybe automobiles or aerial craft, transportation would not be negatively impacted by the Patriots' shutdown. People have used roads since WELL before the Philosophers existed, let alone the Patriots. Not to mention they've used horse buggies and other means of transportation. And since the Ironclad and steamships existed in the 19th century, even the more modern warships wouldn't be negatively impacted. And even regarding cars or airplanes, that would be a minor inconvenience at worst, at least by comparison. Now, that being said, I can sort of understand how that might be bad due to Icepocalypse 2014, but even that didn't result in Armageddon or all of Dunwoody dying (I think there was only one fatality reported from that event).

Overall, the Patriots' total shutdown would not have been even remotely apocalyptic despite what the cast claimed. As such, because of that, Liquid Ocelot's plan, when you get right down to it wouldn't work at all even WITHOUT Sunny's rendition of FOXALIVE preserving everything. It has as much of a chance of happening in reality as revolutions popping up like leprachauns all over the world via what Karl Marx advocated [newsflash guys: other than the USSR, the only other revolutions that occurred were in Germany and Prussia, and even those were put down fairly easily]. It's almost as if Hideo Kojima thought society without the Patriots would have been like what that TV series Revolution depicted.

2. The outcome of Sunny's modifications

So, essentially, thanks to Sunny's modifications, it was supposed to end the Patriots, and avoid Outer Heaven being formed from the dust, leave people "free to choose." There's a small problem with that, however: The people who had those aspects probably would just choose one or the other anyway, and if anything actually makes a neo-Patriots that's arguably even WORSE than the original and/or an Outer Heaven war-torn world all the MORE likely, which could even be seen with Drebin 893's drunken rant to Otacon below:

Drebin           : Yeah, well, it ain't all sunshine and rainbows. Lotta folks lost their entire sense of being the moment SOP went offline. Otacon           : You mean SOPS? I heard some people are going through withdrawals... SOP Syndrome. Drebin           : Yup. SOP kept more than just alcohol under control. Those poor slobs are virtually naked now. Otacon           : From what I hear, over 10 percent are showing symptoms. I guess getting rid of the Patriots won't solve all our problems overnight. Drebin           : You probably already suspected this, but... I'm not actually an employee of AT Security. Otacon           : Huh? Drebin           : The Patriots raised me to be a gun launderer. Otacon           : The Patriots? Drebin           : My earliest memories are of the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army)... They kidnapped me... Forced me to fight. Yup. You're staring at a former child soldier. My parents, brothers and sisters... All killed in the war. Guess that makes me what you'd call a war orphan. After that, the Patriots picked me up and brought me into the family business. I was Drebin 893. There's a whole lotta pawns like me all over the world. How you suppose I laundered guns like I did? 'Cause they let me. In fact... I was under strict orders to back you guys from the start. Otacon           : You what? Drebin           : Hey man, don't take it personal. I wasn't the only one under their orders. Otacon           : Huh? Meryl and...? Drebin           : They probably never realized it themselves, but... Rat Patrol Team 01.... Voila! Otacon           : Patriot! Drebin           : Played like a violin. Otacon           : But... Why? Drebin           : Obviously, Liquid's plot was a threat to the Patriots. So they planned to have you guys take care of it. Otacon           : Didn't turn out quite how they planned, though, did it? Drebin           : Yeah, well... I don't think they expected you to crash their System and wipe them out. Otacon           : So does that mean you're out of a job now? Drebin           : Are you kiddin'? I got the DREBINS. All the Drebins in the world are in on it. From now on, we're in business for ourselves. We are pawns no more. Otacon           : Easy there. Drebin           : The White House might've lost its taste for unilateralism... Started to rebuild. But there's a lot of failed states out there that went bankrupt from their PMC habits... And they owe a shit load of money. Now only question is... Who's gonna pick up the tab? I'm sure these new governments will try and keep it under control with PMC corporate reform laws... But it ain't gonna be good enough. They're all sunk up to their eyeballs in the war economy. Might not be a New World Order... But the old order under the war economy's gone for good. I'm guessin' the UN is gonna be more important than ever, what with multilateralism and all. A certain President said it best back during the Cold War... For in the development of this organization rests the only true alternative to war. Then again, the UN itself's just an old 20th-century relic. And if you think about it... When you look at its history... It ain't that different from the Patriots. Otacon           : That's right... The nanomachines used to keep you sober. Drebin           : Crush. Mix. Burn. Repeat.

Based on what Drebin was talking here, there are only two possible outcomes for Sunny's FOXALIVE, neither of which are actually good, in the long run or the short run. On the one hand, you've probably got a booming business for weapons dealers (since the DREBINS, as Drebin 893 pointed out, is a gun laundering group/arms dealer group, and not the legal kind either), which likewise implies that the world is even MORE likely to be at war with each other than before, probably far beyond what even Liquid Ocelot himself envisioned. The other scenario involves the entire world being more broke than Weimar Germany and the United Nations taking over the Patriots role as the NWO organization, arguably being even WORSE than before, meaning the cycle isn't just going to continue, but arguably get even worse, thanks to Sunny, Snake, and Otacon. Put that way, this isn't a bittersweet ending which would indicate at least some positives to the whole thing, it's an outright downer ending with NO ONE winning out, not even Raiden, who has a bone thrown to him for once by letting him actually reunite with his family at long last (in fact, it's about as much of a downer ending as The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, also The Matrix Revolutions). Actually, if that were the option, letting the Patriots continue to exist and/or having Outer Heaven take over would have been far more preferable options. At least Outer Heaven has a military hierarchy that respects soldiers (and thus really can't qualify as anarchistic since anarchy doesn't allow for any hierarchy, structure, stability, or law and order, viewing such as "oppressive"), and even the Patriots at least attempt to adhere to law and order. Seems like Hideo Kojima just failed to think things through.

Anyways, that's pretty much my two cents on this. There may be more I might think up of later, but for now that covers everything.

[jotunlokisuggestion]

when you say a lot of things currently happening politically, do you mean world or germany?

//Having finished typing this, I’m just going to put an apology in advance for the incoming rant.

Answer: Both I guess. There is a lot of things going on in the world that I worry about politically at the moment. Of course I worry about North Korea. About the Middle East. About Boku Haram in Nigeria. About detained children in the US. About the Australian government putting refugees in camps with hardly any medical attention. About fires in Greece. I follow the news and I’m aware these things are happening and I know that most of them are worse than what we’re dealing with in Germany. But the thing is. Growing up I never imagined these things to reach us the way they do now.

Until now. A few weeks ago the AfD became more popular in the polls than the SPD (the social-democrats), the only party older than the Federal Republic of Germany. The party that was persecuted under Hitler and had to go abroad and resisted. The party that existed in the Weimarer Republic. The party that already existed when we had a fucking Kaiser. (to be fair, the AfD surpassing them is mostly due to the SPD rapidly losing in polls but it’s still scary) You know, almost every Western country currently has a party of right-winged nutters and Nazis on the rise and…sadly we do to. The AfD. We actually were late to this because Germany isn’t very accessible to that kind of rhetoric but they started getting popular in 2014 as a party of “Europe-sceptic” old people. And then they kicked out their leader and replaced them with the very radical right-wing Frauke Petry. And she led the party for a while and I remember 2015 was:

“OMG FRAUKE PETRY IS SUCH A NAZI SHE’S SO SCARY THIS IS DANGEROUS SHIT!” which was true.

Then, one day after the last election in 2017 Frauke Petry left the party - because it had become too right-wing for her. (obviously only after she got her seat in the Bundestag)

Reaction: “OMG THE MODERATE FRAUKE PETRY HAS LEFT THE ONLY REASONABLE VOICE IN THE AFD NOW THE NAZIS WILL TAKE OVER!”

Like…you can’t illustrate a movement to the right in a country and in a party more clearly than that.

We don’t have a Trump or a Duterte as Chancellor. The AfD is in the Bundestag now - which is also something people couldn’t imagine a few years ago! - but they’re not in charge, they’re in the opposition and the other parties in the opposition hate then more than the actual government and refuse to work with them. So they mostly sit around and complain.

I disagree with Merkel on many things and I never voted CDU but I can live with her and for all I care she can stay Chancellor forever if that’s the only thing that can prevent Alice Weidel from becoming Chancellor. 

But you know-

I left school about 5 years ago. So I went to school all through 2000-2013. And in basically every year and in most classes one way or another we discussed the question: “Can “it” happen again.” at some point - “It” being the NS-Regime. 

As long as I can remember I mostly sided with ‘yes’. That yes, it can happen again. Looking at the world and looking at places like North Korea or China (and in many ways also the US, no offence) I always felt like it’s very arrogant how many Germans often argue: “Well, we learnt from our mistakes!”- “We are different because we know what can happen.” - “We had the Weimar Republic and did away with all the weaknesses and loopholes.” As if we are somehow smarter or more educated or magically the only nation on the world advanced enough to realise the Nazis are bad.

The thing is. I figured it could happen again. I always figured it would look differently. The Nazis have a very…strong brand, let’s put it like that. And their uniforms and their salute and the very language they used or the way Hitler talked - this stuff is something basically every child in Germany knows. There is a huge awareness.

So I always figured that if something like that rose again, it would look very different. 

But doesn’t. Björn Höcke - one of the biggest AfD politicians told some American newspaper that “Adolf Hitler wasn’t all that bad”. Many AfD-politicians are insisting we are mourning the victims of the Holocaust too much. Some of Alice Weidel’s supporters (she’s the most important AfD-politician at the moment.) almost got kicked out of Sachsenhausen because they denied the Holocaust loudly in fucking Sachsenhausen. They went into a former concentration camp- now a memorial place - and denied the Holocaust. (Which is illegal in Germany so the police is investigating it obviously, but. Good luck proving that because obviously, they deny it)

And then Chemnitz happened. Chemnitz is. Scary as fuck.

I know there was some international coverage about what went on/is going on in Chemnitz but I’m not sure how many people outside of Germany followed that so let’s simplify it like this:

A few people got into an argument. whatever really happened aside, it ended tragically with two men stabbing another man. There was a lot of mourning  as you can expect - also a lot of serious, honest mourning. But the thing was - the two culprits were refugees and the victim was German. And the city it happened in has…strong Nazi-presence. I mean the classic, bald-headed baseball-bat carrying drunkard-type, not even the well-dressed Identitarian Alt-Right type. The honesty-in-advertising kind. 

And these Nazis grasped the opportunity and started marching through the streets of Chemnitz, attacking people, doing the Hitler Salute singing the U-Bahn-Song (It’s a forbidden Nazi song about “building an underground train to Auschwitz” like. This level of vile. Imagine Charlottesville without torches).

And AfD-politicians like Höcke or Gauland expressed sympathy. Like…so far they did everything to avoid being placed in this context. They tried to look modern and clean and educated and shit to hide their ideology. They even avoided associating too publicly with Pegida, which was less radical than what is going on in Chemnitz. They are no longer scared of losing popularity over this.

 And many Germans argue: Well, Chemnitz is a “Nazi-city” and Saxony is the “Nazi-state”. And “everyone knows it’s a problem area.” and “haha let’s just send the Saxons off to Syria then everything is perfect and alright in Germany again and obviously no West-German has ever had a bad thought about foreigners in their life.” 

And yeah, it’s probably the biggest problem area we have. I have friends from Saxony and the shit they’ve seen their  - especially in smaller towns - is really scary. One German-Israeli comedian called Shahak Shapira wrote a book about growing up in the East which might be translated into English one day because he does a lot of stuff in English and if it does, I recommend it if you’re interested in that stuff because he does a good job of talking about these places in a way that explains them well to outsiders. A friend of mine from Marocco studied in Dresden - the capital of Saxony - for a while and he told me about some shit he’d seen there. A colleague told me her roommate turned down a job offer in Dresden because she asked where they’d recommend she should move there and - in response because she’s black - the interviewers explicitly said that there was only 1! part of the city she could live safely. That’s Dresden.

And Chemnitz is Dresden times ten. So yeah, Germans saying it’s a Saxony-problem or a Chemnitz-problem or an East-Germany problem aren’t lying (although they’re also doing it to distract from huge problems in other parts of the country) but the thing is - this shouldn’t exist. These are our version of sundown towns and saying it’s not a problem because “people there are like that” a) ignores the victims b) normalises this ideology for the sake of feeling better about ourselves and c) it’s also a breeding ground for this ideology and it’s not going to stop a the borders or walls of these cities. 

And the thing is. You know how I talked about how I always said it could happen again but now imagining how? This is the one way I always said I couldn’t imagine it. I never imagined it to take exactly the same shape. And this scares the shit out of me. These people are doing the Hitler Salute. They are singing about Auschwitz. They are honouring Nazi-politicians and visiting their burial places. And this is something I never thought I’d see here.